A debut not of ambition, but of becoming. A love letter written in earth tones and memory, the weight of quiet stories revived by designer Phan Nguyễn Nguyên Huy for his first official entry into the sacred calendar of couture. The collection unfolds as a subtle poem to Vietnam, not stagnant in nostalgia, but alive in the present.
Palais de Tokyo, all brutal lines and concrete skin, softens under the spell of twilight. A Cinderella moment, rewritten in the audience. No pumpkin carriage, no glass slipper, or disappointing prince charming – just the iconic Phan Huy Spring-Summer 2025 creation floating like a dream: a plunging high-low silhouette draped in floral whispers. On the runway, Phan Huy metamorphoses intimate Vietnamese narratives into sweeping couture moments—a metamorphosis at core: “This show is one of the most important moments of my career. Each look in this collection tells a story — a familiar image drawn from the everyday life of Vietnamese people.”
Thirty-six visions in motion, Nón lá hats sparkle anew, woven from crystals and knots as a light catcher. All eyes on me behavior. Fishing nets, banana leaves, and charcoal stoves — once fragments of daily life — now move as living forms and blend into our collective memory. Once worn by queens, revolutionaries, schoolgirls, and mourners, the emblematic Ao dai is remembered. Modest yet sensual, delicate yet defiant, rooted yet ever-evolving, the national garment is sharpened to a new edge.
The colors spoke in local dialects — clay, ash, and lime tones pulled from the earth, brick ovens, harvest, and fire. 3D layering and sculptural draping become a kind of alchemy, replicating the textured verse of the land itself: tree trunks spiraling upward, stacks of straw huddled, reminiscing of rural monuments, and rocky hollows carved by rain and time. There’s no grand narrative here, no myth to follow. Just the act of remembering. Of honoring the lives built in silence, under roofs of palm and zinc, beside rivers that knew every secret. Phan Huy does not dress women to transform them, but to return them to softness, to essence, to the stories they had forgotten they carried.
