by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

Duy (who goes by his middle name because his “real name is too long and complicated”) has a deep, dark secret. It’s something one would never guess from looking around this local designer’s chic and unassuming four-month-old clothing and design St-Paul street store Everyday Beautiful Objects, or EBO. In fact, it’s not much of a secret, since the 24-year-old rising star-du-jour of Montreal fashion admitted it to me within five minutes of meeting him: he still lives with his parents in the suburbs.

It’s true: Duy proudly forgoes living in a swish and cher Old Montreal loft, opting instead, for pragmatic reasons, to ride the bus in every day from the West Island. “Living with your parents, you don’t have to stress about making your food or doing your laundry,” Duy relates with a mischievous smile. “I live with them so I can afford to do all this,” he continues, referring to the store and his work as a clothing designer. After all, it was in his childhood home that it all began. “It’s where I started designing clothes for Barbies out of different coloured tissue paper,” he laughs. “And I was always criticizing the way my mother dressed.” From amateur style critic and toilet-paper couturier to what he is today, the Vietnamese-Canadian fashion hound seems to have played his cards right.

3D vision
Since he returned from a year in London just over a year ago, Duy has managed to produce three women’s fashion collections and open a store specializing in, well, just what the name says. “I don’t want to sell just clothes—that would be boring,” he says of Everyday Beautiful Objects. “Some people think design is too expensive or impractical, like a $10,000 piece of furniture you can’t sit in because you don’t want to scratch it. I’d rather sell good quality design stuff that’s reasonably priced.”

Having studied architecture briefly before switching over to fashion, Duy applies his structural design sensibilities to both choosing items for the store and creating his collections. “Most designers start by taking a piece of fabric, draping it and playing around with it. I think of everything first, in 3D, then I just go ahead and make the pattern.” His designs have been praised for being sensuous and fluid yet totally modern and graphically inspired, with a minimalist bent. “To add is easy, but to take away is really hard,” Duy muses. “To make something simple, it has to be perfectly made because you can’t hide anything.”

As for all the attention his clothes are getting lately from Canadian fashion mags and interested buyers, it appears this hot young thing would almost like to cool it down a little. “I want to take things slowly because I already work seven days a week and I don’t want to burn out too quickly,” he confesses. “Already it’s too much to handle and I’m going a bit crazy! I love my work but I don’t want to kill myself for it.”

Duy’s designs can be found at EBO (356 St-Paul W., 830-8125) and at U&I (3650 St-Laurent, 844-8788)

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