NGUYEN INC SS23
By Roisin Breen
Nguyen Inc was founded in 2020 by Kim Nguyen, the Texas-born, New York-based Vietnamese designer with experience designing for brands like Marc Jacobs and Supreme. Nguyen Inc made its start with handmade, upcycled fitted tees, with distinct graphics that express the brand’s attitude: unabashedly bold. Now with two years of building recognition through these shirts, Nguyen Inc presents its first full collection.

“It’s been two and a half years since I made the first upcycled fitted tee. Someone asked me recently how many they thought I had made since then, and I realized I hadn’t even thought about it — maybe over 150 at this point? I drape and sew each tee myself, which I know is not a time effective way to produce clothing, but it felt important for me to do it that way for my first pieces. I didn’t want to just start with making something that I could easily make in a factory, because I’ve been doing that for other brands for quite a while now. I wanted to get back to making things with my own hands.

For my first collection, I decided to base it off of what started the brand in the first place: a t-shirt. I really wanted to see how far I could take the many tees we sourced from Goodwill, reworking them into all types of silhouettes.

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”. It’s very much the spirit of Nguyen Inc.

SS23 is dedicated to my sister Hanh.”

— Kim Nguyen