“Stylish travelers” are flocking to Hanoi to find “chic, under-the-radar brands,” says Harpers Bazaar. “For centuries, the word for ‘fashion designer’ in Vietnam meant nothing more than ‘dressmaker’ or ‘seamstress’," but a “new guard of sophisticated and upscale designers is reinventing the term.” Fabrics from French, Chinese and Vietnamese traditions “weave together to form a dynamic city that offers unassuming fashion boutiques filled with couture-level quality and modern designs.” Hanoi may be “no substitute for the couture icons of Paris or Milan,” but that’s part of the reason the city is “so charmingly raw and more worthy of our wallet's attention than other, well-trodden fashion capitals.”
If you like books (and coffee), here’s you thing, advises AFAR. The Bookworm Coffee Shop, owned by avid reader Hoang Van Truong, “is regarded by most as Hanoi's best bookshop.” Truong and his team are “enthusiastic and all speak excellent English” to customers in a shop that has “over 10,000 titles in stock.”
“There's no denying the visual aesthetic of Communist propaganda art,” writes AFAR. And “whether you agree with its sentiments or not,” Vietnam's propaganda art is “particularly attractive,” with a “strong feminine touch coming through in many of the designs.” Reproductions are sold in many venues in the Old Quarter including shops like Old Propaganda Posters, “a prosaically named outlet on Hang Bac Street.”