Designing Việt Nam / Folk Racing: Folk Art at Race Pace
Golden carp, red lotus and curling jade water: how we drew the first World Lines jersey, inspired by the flat colours and bold outlines of Vietnamese Đông Hồ folk prints.
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Our newest jersey, Việt Nam / Folk Racing, started with a simple question: what would a race kit look like if it were drawn like a folk print?
It is the first jersey in World Lines, a Corbah series that borrows the visual language of places we love to ride and redraws it for the road. For Việt Nam, that meant golden carp, red lotus flowers and curling jade water, wrapped around a jersey with big, confident race lettering.
Inspired by Đông Hồ printmaking
Đông Hồ is a Vietnamese woodblock tradition. Prints are built from flat colours pressed one block at a time, finished with a dark outline block. That process is what drew us in: bold shapes, a small palette and a strong line holding everything together.
We did not copy any historic print. Every carp, lotus and wave on this jersey is original vector artwork, drawn for this design. The prints were a reference for the feeling, not the content: plump, rounded animals, flat colour and that confident outline.
Five colours, one outline
Like a woodblock print, the jersey uses a deliberately small palette. Each colour has a job:
The cream ground is a departure for us. Most of our jerseys keep a dark lower body, but the folk-print palette needed paper-coloured space to breathe.
A drawing that wraps the rider
We wanted the jersey to read as one picture from every angle in the bunch. Two golden carp swim against each other across the front, and the composition continues on the back and straight across the three rear pockets, so the pocket panel never looks like an afterthought.
The sleeves are asymmetric: lacquer red on the right arm, jade on the left, each wrapped in an oversized cream lotus. It is a small detail that makes the jersey instantly recognisable from the side.
Race lettering, folk drawing
The brief was a pro-style kit, so the CORBAH mark sits big across the chest and back, sized to read at speed. Smaller lettering (VIỆT NAM, FOLK RACING and WORLD LINES) gives it the hierarchy of a team kit without inventing sponsors. Those words are design lettering; there are no partners or teams behind them.
Get yours
Việt Nam / Folk Racing is a short-sleeve, full-zip jersey in men's sizes XS to 4XL. Like all our kit, it is made to order for you.
Original Corbah artwork inspired by the graphic language of Vietnamese Đông Hồ printmaking. This is a contemporary interpretation, not an artisan-made Đông Hồ print or a reproduction of a named work.
