15+ Easy Names Of Clothes In Lao

Are you wondering what a sinh or a salong is? Knowing the labels or names of clothes in Lao can definitely help you be understood right away by the locals. After all, there are many bargains shops that you can visit in the country too and learning the basic vocabulary can make the whole process of buying a lot easier. Let’s know more about this in today’s post!

Names Of Clothes In Lao

Laos Traditional Clothing

The two famous examples of traditional costumes in Laos are the Lao sinh and salong. Lao women wear the sinh, and Lao men wear salong. Let’s discover more about these two in the succeeding paragraphs.

Sinh

Lao women have a certain pressure to always look at their best. Older people like to ask, are our Lao women appropriately dressed? 

Like other countries, the complexity of the sinh will often depend on the social position of the woman in question. In rural areas, you will find more simple sinh that isn’t very colorful, but in high society, you will see very complex patterns. The embroidery is so intricate it can be a little mind-bending to look at. As Laos traditional costumes go, this is worth paying extra attention to.

Like Thai and Vietnamese costumes, silk is the chosen material and comes directly from silkworms fed on mulberry. The preferred looming method in the north is by hand and in the south by foot. As you’d expect, the weaving in the south is more closely related to Khmer culture, the culture that once dominated the region and built the famous Angkor Wat temple.

There are three parts of the complete sinh. The hua sinh, or head sinh, the phuen sinh or body sinh, and the tin sinh, or foot of the sinh. Different parts of the sinh have different levels of complexity. The hua sinh is hidden, so it isn’t well decorated, while the foot of the sinh is the opposite. 

The other main part is the suea pat or shirt wrapped around the top half of the body. It almost looks a bit like a Japanese jiu-jitsu gi or a kimono. The decorative element comes from the pha biang, a kind of shawl that ties the panels of the suea pat together. It is also made of silk.

Salong

The salong are the trousers favored by traditional Lao men. They are a kind of baggy trouser equivalent to the female sinh. You will often see them alongside knee-length white socks and a pha biang similar to the female shawl.

Modern Fashion In Laos

Several nonprofit organizations in Laos are looking to change the lives of citizens through fashion-based projects. For example, the Lao young designer’s project offers scholarships for students to study fashion abroad.

Laos is also trying to put itself on the map by hosting a fashion week in Vientiane. It showcases many of the projects that the young designers are working on. The problems these young designers face are threefold:

1. There is an overabundance of cheap fake products on the Lao clothing market.
2. Laos is a developing country, and people have basic necessities to take care of before thinking of fashion.
3. The nouveau riche of Laos largely care about designer products like Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga.

It can be challenging to operate with such dominant competitors.

Furthermore, the price of cotton in Laos is still very high, which can discourage small designers from setting up a business.

Clothes Manufacturing In Laos

Laos is in a fierce rivalry with nearby Vietnam which has already attracted international brands to set up factories there.

Lao has had a chronic labor shortage for a long time due to its small, rural population. In a 2019 interview, one factory worker commented that he needed an additional 10000 workers. The number of factories in Laos is decreasing and has recently gone from 92 to 78.

This is because workers can earn better wages in Thailand, and border crossing is easy. It is estimated that wages in Thailand are twice as good as those in Laos. And that has attracted an estimated 400,000 Lao citizens. An impressive stat if you consider that the population is only 7 million.

Laos is a landlocked country with poor transport links(However, that is set to change in the coming years with Chinese investment). On the other hand, Vietnam has 1000’s km of coastline, allowing easy access to shipping. Another problem is the export capabilities of certain factories.

Learn Lao With Ling

If you want to learn Lao, Ling is the place for you. We have everything you have come to expect from a language learning app. We have interesting games and quizzes that will help you improve core skills like speaking, writing, listening, reading, and grammar practice. What more could you want?

Most crucially, our listening activities are provided by native speakers so you can nail your pronunciation. Not to mention that our trace function teaches you how to write the Lao alphabet.

Of course, this blog is updated weekly. The previous two have been animal names in Lao and Job titles in Lao— vocabulary just as essential as clothes in Lao.