The traditional style has both indigenous and foreign elements due to the diverse cultural exchanges during the history of Vietnam.

[1]: 1–2  The upper classes of Vietnam in Northern Vietnam tended to wear clothing which mirrored and was influenced by the fashions of the Chinese, and this style of clothing persisted even after the end of the Chinese rule in the independent kingdom of Đại Việt and in Champa.

[1]: 1–2 For centuries, peasant women typically wore a halter top (yếm) underneath a blouse or overcoat, alongside a skirt (váy or quần không đáy).

[1]: 20, 26 [dubious – discuss] The Han Chinese referred to the various non-Han "barbarian" peoples of North Vietnam and Southern China as "Yue" (Việt) or Baiyue, saying they possessed common habits like adapting to water, having their hair cropped short and having tattoos.

[1]: 21  It was in the subsequent centuries after the fall of the Han dynasty that there was a large influx of Chinese in the region of Annan.

[4]: 25 Non-Chinese immigrants were attracted to the Tang dynasty-ruled Annan, and non-Chinese migrants started settling in the neighbouring areas; the blending of Chinese culture, Mon-Khmer, and Tai-Kradai in northern Vietnam led to the development of the national majority, the Vietnamese people.

[1]: 21  During the thousand years of imperial domination, the Vietnamese adopted Chinese clothing, but local customs and styles yet were not assimilated and lost.

[1]: 21 Vietnamese wore a round neck costume, which was made from 4 parts of cloth called áo tứ điên.

The convention was popular until the Fourth Chinese domination of Vietnam.In 1400s, Emperor Lê Quý Ly wrote a poem to describe his country and his government to the Ming dynasty envoys, explaining shared cultural status between Đại Ngu and Ming by referring to the Han and Tang dynasties during a time when Đại Việt was a part of China, "You inquire about the state of affairs in Annan.

[13]: 110 In 1435, Nguyễn Trãi, a scholar official, and his colleagues compiled the Geography (Dư địa chí) based on the lessons he had taught to the prince, who then became Emperor Lê Thái Tông; his teachings also included how Vietnamese were different from their neighbours in terms of language and clothing customs: "The people of our land should not adopt the languages or the clothing of the lands of the Wu [Ming], Champa, the Lao, Siam, or Zhenla [Cambodia], since doing so will bring chaos to the customs of our land".

[4]: 138 [13]: 82  Therefore, they considered that all those styles, including those of Champa and Khmer, should not be worn as they disregarded the customs of the Vietnamese, who continued to follow the rites of Zhou and Song dynasties: in the Dư địa chí, it is written that according to the scholar Lý Tử Tấn, during the reign of Trần Dụ Tông, Emperor Taizu of Ming bestowed a poem saying, "An Nan [Đại Việt] has the Trần clan, and its customs are not those of the Yuan [Mongols].

Its rites and music follow the relationship between ruler and minister, as in the Song dynasty” and therefore Emperor Taizu promoted the ambassador of Đại Việt (Đoàn Thuận Thân) by 3 ranks to be equal that of Joseon.

The Lê dynasty encouraged the civilians to return to traditional customs: teeth blackening as well as short hair or shaved heads.

A royal edict was issued by Vietnam in 1474 forbidding Vietnamese from adopting foreign languages, hairstyles and clothes like that of the Lao, Champa or the "Northerners" which referred to the Ming.

[4]: 87 The dragon robe (áo Long Bào) was worn in Vietnam since the Restored Late-Lê period, Phan Huy Chú wrote in the Categorized Records of the Institutions of Successive Dynasties (Lịch triều hiến chương loại chí):[14] "Since the Restored Later-Lê era, for grand and formal occasions, (the emperors) always wore Xung Thiên hat and Long Bào robe...."Through many portraits and images of rulers during the Ming, Joseon, and more recently, during the Nguyễn dynasty, one could see that this standard (the wearing of Long Bào) existed for a long period of time within a very large region.

The tràng vạt dress appeared very early on in Vietnamese history, possibly during the first Chinese domination by Eastern Han, after Ma Yuan was able to finally defeat the Trưng Sisters’ rebellion.

[1]: 73  In 1744, Lord Nguyễn Phúc Khoát of Đàng Trong (Huế) both men and women at his court wear trousers and a gown with buttons down the front.

[1]: 1–2  When the Vietnamese started to assimilate the majority of the Cham and the Khmer Krom living in their new conquered southern territories; and the Vietnamese-ification of the Cham and the Khmer Krom lead to them adopting Vietnamese style clothing while at the same time retaining several distinctive ethnic elements.

[4]: 295 From the twentieth century onward, Vietnamese people began wearing Western clothing due to modernisation and French influence.

In 2013, researcher Trần Quang Đức published the book Ngàn năm áo mũ, marking the first step in restoring traditional costumes in Vietnam.

Currently, there are many companies that research and reproduce traditional Vietnamese clothing, for example, a company called Ỷ Vân Hiên started to provide tailoring services of ancient Vietnamese clothing which included the áo ngũ thân and áo tràng vạt.

[21] Ỷ Vân Hiên company largely reproduces clothing worn in the Nguyễn dynasty period.

[23] Painter Cù Minh Khôi and his friends launched the Hoa Văn Đại Việt project which digitized 250 ancient Vietnamese decorative patterns which spanned from the Lý dynasty to Nguyễn dynasty and applied them to variety of modern products such as keychains, calendars, T-shirts, and lucky money packets.

[21] In 2018, a book called Dệt Nên Triều Đại in Vietnamese language and Weaving a Realm in English language was published by the Vietnam Centre, an independent, non-government and non-profit organization which aims to promote Vietnamese culture to the world.

Besides suits and dresses nowadays, men and women can also wear áo dài on formal occasions.