"There is nothing I would like to change about my past".  Such a statement requires a certain level of self assurance, and that Mai Lam does not lack. Well-acclaimed as she is now at fifty, the designer has experienced ups and downs as well as fateful turns she never could have expected.

Mai Lam was one of the ‘boat people’ who left Vietnam for Australia during wartime, where she worked in a fish factory, washed dishes and did laundry in a hotel to survive.

The details will be left for a memoir expected to come at some point later in her life, but step by step she learned to steer clear of all the considerable hindrances on her path and make her way to where she is now. Life experiences gathered from 20 years in Australia of building a life from scratch and then coming back to Vietnam at a time of transition in the country have given her fertile ground on which her gifts can grow.

Mai Lam never actually enrolled in a fashion design school. In fact, until six years ago when she went back to Vietnam with her husband seeking investment opportunities, fashion had never come up in her mind as a road to take. ‘I don’t think I ever consciously wanted to become a fashion designer,’ she says. Certain paths just lead me where I am today. I have always been interested in design and aesthetics, but also history and feng shui.’

Mai started making and designing clothes for family and friends out of her own interest. Things evolved and in 2006, encouraged by the response, she opened Mai’s in the Continental hotel on stylish Dong Khoi Street.
In the world of Vietnamese fashion designers, Mai Lam is recognized for an elaborate fusion of ethnic influences. With a keen look into Vietnam’s history, Mai Lam takes out materials from all subcultures embedded in Vietnam’s large culture. ‘Vietnam is rich in cultures. External impacts, Chinese, French, American and so on are also a part making our culture the way it is. I embrace them all,’ she says.

She does not just purely document what she observes, however. Mai inherits old things and creates something new. ‘I want to show off Vietnam to the world,’ she says. ‘More, I want the world not only to see but also to wear clothes from Vietnam. To do that, you can’t stay out of touch with the world and its current time.’ Thus, she adds contemporary edge to her designs, making them fit in the modern age and bringing in practicality. ‘I don’t buy clothes to hang on the wall and look. I buy and put them on. So must my customers,’ she explains.

To sum up on her own style, Mai Lam concludes: ‘Culturally and historically rooted, sophisticated and practical.’
Many of those who call on Mai’s are tourists, who are on constant quest for exotic items or in another word, something (or anything) very much Vietnamese. However, according to the designer, a fair number of her clients are expatriates living in Vietnam and the shop also receives a lesser amount of locals. ‘Those who appreciate culture and are willing to change’, is the way Mai Lam sees her customers.

Stepping into fashion with no strings attached, Mai Lam now also follows her artistic callings in other playgrounds. From a fashion store at the start, Mai’s boutique has transformed into a showroom of living space concepts. Lately, an obsession with embroidery has been hatched. Delivery is promised to be in June? when the boutique will blossoms into an expo of handcraft embroidery. ‘I see the traditional craft being replaced by machine work. I see a precious Vietnamese heritage fading. We’re slowly losing our roots,’ Mai says.

Outside of the boutique’s doors, she is also working on a fashion program for television, The Mai Lam Talk Show. Airing in October 2009, the show aims to project the artist’s love and passion for Vietnam’s heritage through a variety of art forms and her distinctive perspectives on Vietnam’s culture and society as one who experienced 20 years living overseas and came back.

Projects galore. Creativity finds no boundaries. What keeps the self-created artist restlessly going?
“I am proud of it (Vietnamese culture). Every Vietnamese should be proud of it” says Mai Lam.
 

WORDS: Chi Mai