This story originally appeared in i-D’s The Timeless Issue, no. 371, Spring 2023. Order your copy here.
Kim Nguyen describes the Vietnamese phrase ham chơi as something you might say to a little kid who plays too much. “Like, ‘you need to go do your homework, ham chơi !’”, she explains on a rainy afternoon in her Chinatown studio. It’s a phrase that Kim’s mum would often repeat to her dad, who liked to party. But it’s also a fitting introduction to the designer’s debut runway collection, presented on a cast of downtown New York’s fashion set who showcased the colourful low-rise crochet minis, bold logo T-shirts and downtown-skate-slash-nouveau-Vietnamese aesthetic that has quickly come to define her label. “My dad defines ham chơi as a way to describe someone with a ‘you only live once’ mentality, whereas my mom translates it to ‘someone who parties way too hard’”, Kim wrote in the show notes. “It’s very much the spirit of Nguyen Inc.”
Though technically Kim staged her first fashion show in her high school’s auditorium, sending her friends down the runway in upcycled garments to Aphex Twin, her first official show was a bit more intentional – but no less guerilla-style, and starring no fewer friends. A soundtrack noting all the different ways the designer’s name had been pronounced and mispronounced throughout her life played as people from her community – Eri Wakiyama, Paloma Elsesser and Richie Shazam – walked down Chinatown’s Centre Market Place.
From Mimi Zhu to Trisha Do, a cast of familiar faces, and bodies of all shapes and sizes, hit the pavement. Kim’s material of choice – upcycled T shirts – were manipulated into form-fitting, áo dài style tank dresses, striped corset minis and even a high-waisted, sequin skirt inspired by traditional indigenous dress, modelled by Xoai Pham and paired with a crocheted spider plushie. The crowd that had gathered — a collection of anyone and everyone in the downtown art scene, as well as writers, editors and stylists in the know — lined the street. As it concluded, they cheered Kim on; smiling and laughing, some even crying.
This community spirit is what led Kim to launch her fashion brand in the first place. Before Nguyen Inc came to be, she studied womenswear at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and designed for Marc Jacobs and Supreme, which combined her interest in subcultures, skateboarding, and music, in particular popular skate video soundtracks of the 90s and 00s. “Supreme was never on my radar growing up. I was always obsessed with high fashion and couture because that’s what I grew up looking at in magazines, but it ended up being the perfect place for me.”
“I felt like I could work there for a really long time,” she says now, which is why, a couple of years in, she had to call it quits. “I’d always wanted to do my own collection, have my own brand. I just felt like if I didn’t do it then, I didn’t know if I ever would. It was really scary and I didn’t have a single thing lined up, but I was like, I’m just gonna quit.” After all, you only live once.
From Kim’s studio on Canal Street, where she’s talking me through her first collection, you can see a landscape of Chinatown souvenir shops with their miniature New York licence plates, Statue of Liberty magnets and graphic tees touting The Sopranos’ Bada Bing! strip club alongside phrases like ‘New York Fucking City’. After leaving Supreme in 2019, Kim started collecting these sun-bleached tees, sewing up the sides and the back to mould them to the body’s curves, and printing graphics – like political slogans, or abstract phrases – on the front. With their sexy but sporty bodycon silhouettes, the tees quickly caught on – so much so that it was hard to keep up, encouraging her to push the bounds of the T-shirt into a full-on collection.
“Regardless of if it’s going to make me tons of money or not, I need it to be out there. I need to tell my story.” Kim Nguyen
Though Kim quit her job suddenly, she’d been dreaming of this moment her whole life. She grew up in a suburb of Houston called Bellaire — home to the third largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. In the nail salon where her mother worked, she cured her boredom by flipping through the salon’s glossy fashion magazines and sketching dresses that she’d then try to sell to her mum’s clients. “My mom’s super fashionable — I think that’s probably the reason why she started doing nails when she came to America,” Kim says, adding that she’d often go with her mum to beauty supply stores to stock up on brightly coloured acrylics, the large jars of powder lining the store shelves. “I think it was around eight years old when I just decided that I would start sketching dresses. And it was always the same sexy gown silhouette.”
With these early sketches and her younger self in mind, Kim still aims to make everyone that she designs for — whether friends or strangers — feel confident in her clothes. For SS23, she worked closely with all the models to make sure they not only looked good, but felt it too. Colour remains important to her as well, as a tool to reflect upon her journey as a designer. The collection was divided into three sections. The first, comprised of all white garments, represented the beginning, a clean slate; the middle, full of punchy colour in an ode to eternal style icons like Karen O and The Distillers’ Brody Dalle; and finally, black, which holds space for everything going in the world while hinting at what’s to come.
“I’m trying to do something that feels elevated but not pretentious, and still palatable in a way that if my fourteen-year-old self saw it, she would be able to understand it and relate to it. It’s really important for me to make something beautiful, but also have it be attainable,” Kim explains, adding that she has no plans of slowing down. “As long as people feel there’s a need, I’m going to keep doing it. Regardless of if it’s going to make me tons of money or not, I need it to be out there. I need to tell my story.”
As collaboration is truly the beating heart of Kim’s creative process, and with the goal of translating the energy, joyful spirit and ham chơi that is Nguyen Inc, below we’ve invited Kim’s creative community to ask her a few questions.
Paloma Elsesser, Model
Kim! Will you marry me? If so, what are you wearing and what will our wedding look like?
I’d marry you in a heartbeat, are you kidding? Sometimes when we hang out I laugh so hard that it feels like I’m on drugs, but in a good way, and that’s what I’d want our wedding to feel like. So, I think this is the perfect opportunity for us to have a Vegas wedding, somewhere in a chapel where the walls are pink, and there’s really gaudy gold-painted fixtures everywhere and probably a lot of neon lights. I’d like to look like Divine as Dawn Davenport on her wedding day in Female Trouble, and ALL of the guests are required to show up in a white wedding dress. But it’s also a Project Runway challenge and you have to make your own outfit, but you’re only allowed to spend $25 on the whole thing and whoever wins gets a $100 gift voucher to Margaritaville in New York.
Eri Wakiyama, Artist
If you weren’t a creative in the fashion industry, what would you be doing? Like, if it didn’t even exist, what would your alter ego or second life be?
I’d want to be on a farm living off of the food that I grew, building furniture out of whatever surrounding materials the environment had to offer. Have you ever watched that TV series Alone? Kind of like that, but way warmer and sexier. Or maybe I’d pursue a job in finance. My economics professor pulled me aside one day and asked if I would consider changing my major because I did so well in that class, but I wasn’t interested. I do think about what would have happened if I had taken her suggestion and changed my path.
SK Lyons Artist, Model
Do you believe dreams are profound and if so will you share your most impactful one?
I watched Paprika before bed last night and honestly wish my dreams were as vivid as they are in that movie. There’s one dream I had in high school that I still remember: I was roaming around the hallways and opened the janitor’s closet and MF Doom was in there. He was wearing a janitorial jumpsuit, but his name tag said MF Broom and he was, in fact, carrying a broom.
Xoai Pham, Model
Tell me about something you love that you think is incredibly underrated.
The Mars Volta De-Loused in the Comatorium album; wearing clothes that don’t fit right; long aimless walks; eating dinner at six pm.
Becky Akinyode, Stylist
You grew up in Houston, Texas, a city that’s pretty diverse with a large population of Black, Asian and Latino communities. Do you draw inspiration from where you’re from? And if so, how does it show up in your collections?
Absolutely. In Houston, there’s a neighbourhood called Bellaire that I grew up going to a lot with my family, where there are restaurants and businesses in which people only speak Vietnamese. I didn’t visit Vietnam until I was about eleven years old, so that was important for me to experience.
Lynette Nylander, Editor
What would you prefer, the chance to go back in time, or the chance to see your future, and why?
You know what this reminds me of? When RuPaul shows the girls their baby photos just before the finale of every Drag Race season and asks them what they would say to their younger selves. I think that’s what I would do, I’d go back in time to hug my younger self and tell her that she is beautiful and smart – that she is more than enough, regardless of what anyone else will tell her.
Nick Sethi, Photographer
Where does the power come from? Interpret that however you wish.
The Power, in the most literal sense, is a graphic that comes from another great Nick that I know: Nick Atkins. He made it many years ago and gave me a really old shirt with a graphic on it and it reads: The Power “GREAT MOTHER GIVE ME POWER LET THE DARKNESS NOT DESCEND GIVE ME POWER KEEP MY MIND FREE GIVE ME POWER GREAT MOTHER”. This is what I printed over the first run of tees I made for Nguyen Inc. I don’t know who exactly Great Mother is, but for me, it is synonymous with a higher power, which I believe exists and it guides me in this world!
Carol Lim, Designer and Co-Founder of Opening Ceremony
They say the perfect number of guests for a dinner party is six. if you were to have a dinner party… which five other guests would you invite?
Vivienne Westwood, John Waters, Trịnh Công Sơn, Rihanna and my sister Hanh, I’d like to know what she’s been up to in the afterlife.
Denise Blumenstein, Kim’s first assistant
Would you say working with T-shirts is something that will stay a fixed part of your work, or are you looking to transition out of it? And if so, what’s something you are drawn to working with fabric-wise?
I think using T-shirts as a material and a silhouette will stay with me until I am absolutely repulsed by it, and that hasn’t happened yet! I’m drawn to all types of fabrics, but as much as I am drawn to materials that are luxurious and innovative, I also really love materials that most would probably consider trash.
Saji Gabriel, Artist and Designer
How important is it for you that your studio is in Chinatown, or a predominantly Asian neighbourhood?
Really important! The majority of my office building is occupied by Asian businesses that have been there for many years, and when I was applying to lease the office space, the super, Xu, had vouched for me to take the space as a “young Asian businesswoman”, even though I had just met him that day. It was really kind of him and it made me feel like I belonged. Also Canal Street is chaotic all of the time and it reminds me of busy streets in Saigon, which I love, because even though it’s stressful it feels familiar.
Anne Hanavan, Model and Writer
I would love to know how your connection to such a diverse community started. As a 55-year-old woman, I was so blown away to be included in your creative community. It was such a powerful group of individuals but together it was magical!
Anne! I’m so honoured to have had you in the show. I have always really admired people that do everything in their power to live as their most authentic and original selves, and make me feel safe and support me to do the same. I recognised that in you immediately.
Dylan Cao, Designer and Co-Founder of Commission
You either hate hearing this or have been told one too many times, but for me, you are the ultimate definition of “downtown cool”, and Nguyen Inc is a bold embodiment of that. Did you always see this being a parallel? Or was Nguyen Inc meant to be an outlet for something different?
I don’t think of myself as cool, I think of myself as an absolute dork! I know you mean this as a compliment, so I thank you for that. I’ve always wanted to be a designer, even before I knew what the concept of downtown meant, or that it even existed. All I knew was that I wanted to make clothes and make people feel beautiful, and that’s still the same today.
Alicia Mersy, Artist
You always radiate this energy that everything is how it should be, and that you’re living only in the present moment and not so much inside your thoughts. How do you stay calm and centred in the city? How do you balance work and your spiritual practices? What are your rituals?
Well, I think the same thing about you and also want your secrets to serenity! Health is always first in my mind; everything else comes second to that. As you know, I’ve been sober for four years now and take my sobriety very seriously, which means I don’t go out as much as I used to. I’m also always trying new ways to help better maintain my health: for example, I’ve been trying out this new thing where I wake up early and walk outside for a little bit before I start my day. Apparently, the earlier you get sun exposure, the better your night’s rest is and you’ll feel less sleepy during the day.
Mimi Zhu, Author
You and your community created and collaborated on something so beautiful – has it sunk in for you yet? What is your relationship with celebrating yourself?
Honestly, I’m not sure if it really has sunk in! But I bet it will by the time I’m reading this article in print. Since the show, I’ve been focusing on things that make me feel grounded, like taking a bath, exercising, getting eight hours of sleep, catching up with friends, seeing art, watching TV and eating Takis at night. It’s not a celebration in the traditional sense, but these are things that make me feel good and excited to wake up again the next day.
Credits
Photography John Guerrero
Fashion Katelyn Gray
Hair Diego Da Silva at Streeters using Ouai
Make-up Sally Branka at LGA Management using Victoria Beckham Beauty
Nail technician Mamie Onishi at See Management using Dior
Nail technician (Arta, Ylang, Yumi) Miku Tsutaya for Opus Beauty
Set design Kadu Lennox at Frank Reps
Photography assistance Ian Rutter and Tomasso Saconi
Digital technician Evgeny Popov
Fashion assistance Cornelius Lafayette, Jordyn Payne and Zachariah Fairfax
Make-up assistance Chloe Grae
Set design assistance Jean Karlos Kruz, Jerry Miraz and Joe Barnes
Casting director Samuel Ellis Scheinman for DMCASTING
Casting assistance Alejandra Perez
Models Ylang Messenguiral at Women, Xoài Pham at Major, Tati Matkin at Unite Unite, Anyiang Yak and Yumi Nu at The Society, Keria Thomas at Elite, Xue Huizi at IMG, Arta Gee at APM
All clothing and crocheted critters NGUYEN INC
All shoes stylist’s studio