Áo dài ao dai experienced a revival beginning in late 1980s, when state enterprise and schools began adopting the dress as a uniform again. In 1989, 16,000 Vietnamese attended a Miss Ao Dai Beauty Contest held in Ho Chi Minh City. When the Miss International Pageant in Tokyo gave its "Best National Costume" award to an ao dai-clad Trường Quỳnh Mai in 1995, "Thời Trang Trẻ" (New Fashion Magazine) claimed that Vietnam's "national soul" was "once again honored". An "ao dai craze" followed that lasted for several years and led to wider use of the dress as a school uniform. No longer
The dress first large-scale scientific study on the dress was published in "Current Biology" three months after the image went viral. The study, which involved 1,400 respondents, found that 57% saw the dress as blue and black; 30% saw it as white and gold; 11% saw it as blue and brown; and 10% could switch between any of the colour combinations. A small number saw it as blue and gold. Women and older people disproportionately saw the dress as white and gold. The researchers further found that if the dress was shown in artificial yellow-coloured lighting almost all respondents saw the dress