Sinh

These dancers with their graceful upright carriage, their dreamy distant expressions and their party sins (the women were wearing sins made of brightly-coloured silk woven in squares and broad stripes and usually worn by men) were infinitely more appealing than the younger dancers and the electronic band but, as Darachit was fond of saying and without apparent regret, 'Les traditions ne sont plus respectees."

The only enforced dress codes now [in Laos] are for female public servants who continue to wear the sinh, though outside of work they can wear what they like.

After the change in regime of 1975, every woman seen in public was wearing a sin, as this was part of a dresscode favoured by the new socialist government.

Communism made things even worse by eliminating the export market for locally made textiles and, in some cases, prohibiting the production of silk and the manufacture of clothes. Although traditional sins were allowed, colorful ones were considered bourgeois and banned.