Canadian designer Tu Ly, newly appointed creative director of the heritage denim brand Parasuco, has had a long and stellar career in fashion, working for Moose Knuckles, Roots Canada and Ports 1969. He was also the lead designer on the Hudson’s Bay team that created the Canadian Olympic uniforms in 2006, 2008 and 2010. Ly, who was born in Saigon [now Ho Chi Minh City] and left shortly after the North Vietnamese captured the city in 1975, describes the profound connection he felt to Vietnam in 2018, on his first trip back to the country he hadn’t seen since he was seven.
“I didn’t start travelling until my 30s, when I was working for Ports 1969 as their creative marketing director. Suddenly, I was flying all over the world, and my job took me to Tanzania, India, China, Japan, Korea. It took being the design department head at Moose Knuckles to get me to Vietnam. We were creating a special capsule collection for 10 Corso Cuomo in Milan, and they felt they needed me to go to see production through. I said, ‘OK, sure,’ like it was a trip to New York.
“Driving from the airport into Hanoi, I saw an old man sitting by the side of the road, cross-legged on a stool, smoking a pipe – he looked so elegant – I always sit like that. I realized I was so attuned to the mannerisms of the Vietnamese people. It felt like I was coming home. I didn’t feel like a foreigner, even though my Vietnamese is as bad as my French.
“I thought a lot about my mother Lena Nguyen, and I was overcome with sadness: the fact that she was born in this city and had to leave her home here, along with my grandmother, when the North and South separated, and move to Saigon. When my mother left Saigon she had no skills; she had been a housewife, and my father died young. She landed in Ottawa in November of 1975, a single mother of four, with no friends and family. She said, ‘I know how to make people beautiful,’ and started her career as an esthetician and hairdresser. I saw my mother in the way Hanoians comport themselves; she is so elegant and beautiful. All of this came to me during my nights staying at the Metropole hotel, a landmark built in 1901 in Hanoi’s colonial district. I’d go to sleep in tears. I didn’t know how to process it. It was complex, beautiful and strange.
Ly (in white) at his First Communion in Saigon, two years before the family emigrated to Canada in 1975. Photo: Courtesy of Tu Ly
“I spent most of my time in Hanoi’s downtown core, discovering the Old Quarter and the French Quarter. I found I could walk around without any fear, dressed the way I am (I’m no wallflower!). I was received so well. No one looked twice at my Prada cheongsam pyjamas. I loved the French Quarter’s grandiose architecture, boutiques, beautiful tree-lined streets and colonial mansions. In the Old Quarter, I explored its labyrinthine streets, street markets, little stores and food stalls.
“A couple of years before my trip, Barack Obama had visited Hanoi and eaten at a tiny restaurant in the Old Quarter called Bún chả Hương Liên with Anthony Bourdain, and I wanted to see how good it was. They had a traditional Hanoi dish called bún chả [pork patties and caramelized pork belly slices, served in broth with rice noodles, vegetables and herbs]. I’m a food snob, as my mother is a crazy home chef. My verdict? I’d say they forgot to cook the onions to have the right burnt taste.
“For me, everything was powerful. I was discovering things that made me happy about my roots and my background. However, there was one thing that stopped me in my tracks: a portrait of an 18th-century monk hanging in the Metropole hotel. He looked just like me, with a big forehead, round face and sticking-out ears. I called my mom right away on FaceTime and turned the camera to the portrait. ‘Tu, that’s you!’ she said. It was so eerie. When I look at my communion photo, taken in Saigon in 1973, it seems clear he’s my ancestor – we are from the North, after all. I love that he was a monk; that’s the truest form of me. As far as religion goes, we’re Roman Catholic, but everyone says I’m so Buddhist in my thinking. I believe you can solve things with the calmness of your being, light and optimism.
An 18th-century monk bears an uncanny resemblance to Ly. Photo: Courtesy of Tu Ly
“I’ve been back twice since 2018. I love it. One of my friends mentioned to me that maybe I had never thought of going because it was a trauma I’d blocked out. Now I’m planning a trip to Ho Chi Minh City, with my siblings and my mother, and then to the rest of Vietnam.
“My only recollection of it is a toy store that my mom would take us to, and the food and the love.”
–As told to Antonia Whyatt