2026 08 27_04_brazil vs vietnam_fashion culture dress norms

Flip-Flops at the Beach, Blazers at the Desk: Brazil and Vietnam Dress for the Job They Want, Not the Climate They Have

🇧🇷 Brazil · 🇻🇳 Vietnam

*By Priya Mehta, The Global Office

Two countries, both hovering near 30 degrees Celsius most of the year, both famous abroad for the opposite of business formality — Brazil for Carnaval and string bikinis, Vietnam for conical hats and pyjama-clad grandmothers doing tai chi at dawn — and both, once you clock into the office, deeply suspicious of your bare toes. Brazil's power-distance score on the Hofstede Insights index sits at 69; Vietnam's sits at 70 (Hofstede Insights). Translation: in both places, hierarchy isn't just tolerated, it's dressed for, ironed, and worn like armor. The brochure says "tropical and relaxed." The org chart says otherwise.

Do's & Don'ts

🇧🇷 Brazil

🇻🇳 Vietnam

Brazil's contradiction is structural: a country that exports beachwear and Carnaval spectacle to the world runs some of the most conservative office dress codes in Latin America. World Business Culture notes it's "vital that you look your smartest," with overdressing the safer bet, while three-piece suits have traditionally signaled executive rank against the two-piece uniform of the rank and file (World Business Culture). The code is industry-specific — banking and law skew formal, while The Brazil Business notes tech startups and engineering firms have loosened into jeans, polos, and casual Fridays (The Brazil Business). Women, meanwhile, get more latitude to "dress to impress" than counterparts in many other markets — heels, jewelry, and color are expected rather than merely tolerated.

What doesn't budge, at any income level or industry, is footwear. Open-toed shoes are close to a hard no in the Brazilian workplace — a detail so consistent across sources it borders on folklore, but one grounded in a specific cultural association between open heels and a very different profession. It's a useful illustration of how national fashion reputation and workplace fashion reality diverge: the same country that gave the world the string bikini will side-eye your sandals in a conference room.

Vietnam runs on a similar split, though its axis is geography rather than industry. Hanoi, the political capital, carries what Vietcetera calls a "white-collar" formality — dark suits, closed shoes, minimal skin — while Ho Chi Minh City, the commercial engine, runs noticeably more business-casual (Vietcetera). Vietnam Briefing is blunt about the stakes: dressing too casually in a first business meeting "may signal a lack of commitment," and government meetings call for suit and tie without exception, humidity be damned (Vietnam Briefing). The traditional áo dài still surfaces as a de facto uniform for bank tellers, hotel staff, and government office workers, though it has also drifted into everyday wear beyond ceremonial occasions in recent years. Underneath the formality sits an economic reality: Vietnam's textile and garment sector employs roughly 2.5 million people and generated over $43 billion in exports in 2023, with the workforce nearly 75-80% female (ILO) — meaning the country that dresses much of the world's fast-fashion racks is, at home, still asking its own office workers to sweat through long sleeves out of respect.

The Reckoning

Put the two side by side and the shared instinct is unmistakable: both countries treat clothing as a hierarchy-signaling device first and a climate response a distant second. Brazil's power-distance score of 69 and Vietnam's 70 (Hofstede Insights) are close enough to be a rounding error, and it shows up identically at the office door — dress up, not down, when in doubt, and let the air conditioning sort out the rest. Where they diverge is who gets the exemption. Brazil's leniency runs along gender lines, giving women expressive freedom that would raise eyebrows in a Hanoi boardroom. Vietnam's leniency runs along geography and generation instead, with Ho Chi Minh City's startup scene loosening the code faster than Hanoi's institutions will allow.

The other divergence is who's actually making the clothes everyone else is judged for wearing. Vietnam is a top-five global garment exporter built substantially on female labor (ILO), while Brazil's fashion industry leans domestic and expressive — favela-rooted streetwear next to Paris Fashion Week ambitions. One country dresses the world and under-dresses at home; the other dresses conservatively at work while performing maximalism everywhere else. Neither brochure mentions the sandals rule, and both should.

The Part the Brochure Left Out

A poster on Quora, answering a question about appropriate dress for foreigners living in São Paulo, noted that suits are actually rare among local men there — sport coats are the more common marker of professionalism.

A first-time visitor to São Paulo on the Expat.com forum, packing light for a work trip, asked locals whether summer heat meant open sandals would be fine for the office — and was told flatly that open-toed shoes are a workplace no-no, packed only closed shoes after the warning, and was glad she asked.

An embassy spouse reporting on Brasilia for Talesmag described being caught off guard by how much formal wear she actually needed — attending three to four black-tie events and roughly half a dozen receptions a year, eventually resorting to consignment shops back home to keep up.

A long-time Ho Chi Minh City-based expat on a Tripadvisor Hanoi forum thread admitted it took five years of living in Vietnam to realize he'd been dressing inappropriately the whole time — in many Vietnamese eyes, he learned, short sleeves and short trousers read as schoolboy attire, not business wear.

A New Zealand-born volunteer active in Hanoi's charity circuit, posting on the same Tripadvisor thread, said that once he accepted wearing a tie and long-sleeve shirt to meetings with officials — a real adjustment coming from a more casual home culture — doors opened dramatically, including dinner invitations from senior government figures.

Conclusion

If you're moving for work, the packing list writes itself: bring closed shoes and something structured for Brazil, bring long sleeves and a tie you can tolerate in humidity for Vietnam, and leave the assumption that "tropical" means "casual" at home in both cases. The deeper lesson is that neither country's office dress code is really about climate, comfort, or even fashion — it's about legibility. Clothes tell everyone in the room where you sit before you've said a word, and both Brazil and Vietnam have decided that's a message worth sweating for.

The honest wardrobe advice, then, is this: pack for the meeting you're worried about, not the weather you're expecting.