A Public Manifestation — from a Paris-based interior designer who grew up in the U.S. who is done gatekeeping her dreams.

Because I'm done being careful about what I want.

Apr 17, 2026

Let me tell you who I am before I tell you what I want.

I am the daughter of a Vietnamese mother and a Jewish American father, raised in the U.S., and trained as a structural civil engineer during my undergraduate studies — by my mid-twenties I was managing $25 million budgets, managing teams of software developers and testers, scheduling out 300-person teams, presenting to C-suite clients, and traveling the world working for U.S. embassies. I was also, for most of my life, a competitive ice skater at the national level. None of this is how most Parisian interior designers begin.

None of my life is linear. All of it is mine.

On a vacation in London, during a time when I was mostly living out of a suitcase for work, I met a mixed Frenchman. He felt like home the moment we met — which is a strange thing to say, given that I had spent my entire life moving between cultures and countries and versions of myself, never quite feeling a true sense of belonging.

Our second date was a few weeks later in Amsterdam. Our third, a 10-day stay in South Korea three months after we met, was when we said out loud what we'd both been feeling since London.

I returned to Washington D.C., putting in a request for a 6-month sabbatical to my manager, foregoing a potential promotion I’d been up for, to travel with him, to get to know him without the timezone math, without the late night audios. We spent this time traveling the world together, meeting each other's families and friends in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.

A work transfer to Dublin followed, where we first lived together properly — and where I understood that Europe worked for me in a way I couldn't entirely explain. We got married. We moved to Paris. Even without me speaking French. I left the salary. The titles. The path I felt expected of me. I stepped off the ledge of comfort into the unknown.

Six months after arriving in Paris, I applied to an interior decoration master’s program. In French.

The admissions interview was an hour and a half — conducted entirely in French, with the school's director — at this point I was still debating whether to say une or un croissant at the boulangerie, often ending up taking home two because deux croissants was inevitably simpler than knowing if a word was feminine or masculine.

I didn’t have a portfolio. I made one from scratch in a week with hand-sketched projects, moodboards I made in Canva after Googling “Interior Design Moodboards”, and a Google Translate script I memorized (thanks to a photographic memory still intact since childhood) so I could say what I’d done and what I wanted to do next.

Following an hour and a half of me talking in this new language and presenting my interior viewpoint, the directrice looked at me, said something in French I couldn't quite piece together, and turned to her computer. I still remember the sound of her fingers on the keyboard. Then she printed something out and handed it to me across the desk. An acceptance letter.

A few months later, I began my interior studies in French. I graduated. Then I built my interior practice here. I made a life that looks like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere, yet feels entirely like myself.

I love writing an Excel script as much as I love developing a color palette, or tracing the history of an antique, or painting chinoiserie florals. The engineer, the artist, the ice skater, the designer, the woman who crossed an ocean for love — they might seem like contradictions, but they all live in me, always. I spent my whole life searching for home — in cultures, in countries, in people — and now I’ve built an interior practice helping others feel at home, wherever you are. This was never a career pivot. It’s a calling.

I have my Vietnamese mother’s eye for detail and my Jewish American father’s instinct for story. I have a structural engineer’s understanding of space and a designer’s feeling for what a room does to a person when they walk in. I have lived between cultures my entire life — and now I’m making my career in helping other people feel at home in theirs.

I am telling you all of this because what comes next requires context.

Something is shifting.

This week, a New York–based fashion brand I’ve loved from a distance reached out — we’ve never met, but we speak the same language about belonging. About what it means to feel at home in your own life. They make it happen through your wardrobe. I make it happen through your space. Also this week — two luxury interior brands in Paris found me on Substack and contacted me. Magazine editors in Europe and the U.S. have been liking my posts and following.

I’m taking the hint.

So today I’m doing something I’ve never done: I’m putting my dreams in writing. Not in a notebook. Out here, in the open, where the right people might find them.

Photo by NYC-based film photographer, Carissa Bui. Carissa and I met through social media years ago. She is often in Paris and we share in being multicultural. She is American and her husband is Vietnamese.

The collaborations I want.

I want to work with interior and lifestyle brands whose objects feel like they were made for people who think in more than one culture.

I’ve watched what Lisa gachet has done — how she makes collaboration feel like a natural extension of who she already is. I want that. Brands who understand that beauty isn’t a single culture’s idea. Brands who want to reach an audience that lives between countries, between aesthetics, between selves.

I want to work with brands I already know, love, and regularly recommend to friends and clients.

Brands like Selency, Debongout, Bemz, Mon Lit Cabane, Bonsoirs, Tiptoe, Nordic Knots, Blime, Merci, Calepino, Sézane. Here’s what I’d bring: an Asian-American-French sensibility that may not exist in their current library. Collaborations, textile designs, and curated selections that feel like somewhere and someone specific. Not just “global.” Actually specific.

I want gifting relationships with niche brands who are doing values-driven work.

We know your home and your wardrobe are the same conversation. If you make something beautiful and you care about belonging, I want you in my home. I want you while I’m out and about in Paris. I want you in front of my audience.

I want more partnerships with photographers, architects, artists, galleries, antiquaires, and boutiques in Paris who share a values-based vision and serve an international clientele.

That might look like me doing what I do best — cultural translation. Being the person in the room who understands both sides of the conversation, who can confirm and guide a client through a design or purchasing process that otherwise feels foreign.

I want to talk and write in front of your audiences.

I want to be on podcasts. On fellow Substack writers’ newsletters. In conversation with people who are asking the same questions from different angles. If you want to talk about home, belonging, culture, and space — let’s connect.

And because this manifesto is about abundance and not scarcity: I also believe in exchange of services.

If interior design isn’t in your budget right now, here is what I’m currently open to in exchange:

🌻 marketing, branding, and website design
🌻 copywriting and editing
🌻 photo sessions (interiors, portraits, family, couples)
🌻 energy healing and retreats
🌻 childcare
🌻 haircuts
🌻 massage and bodywork
🌻 carpentry for home projects
🌻 artisanal products and creations - art, ceramics, decor

Anything your heart desires, if my business or family has a need for it.

If this is you, reach out. And if it isn’t you but you know someone it could be — please share.

The clients I want to find.

I work with people who are multicultural. Living between places and cultures. Mixed and undefined. Who have spent their lives being asked to choose — a country, an aesthetic, an identity — and have never quite fit the options on offer.

I want to help you find belonging no matter where you call home. That is what I do. It’s what I’ve always been doing. I only recently found the language for it.

Work With Me

The editorial features I haven’t pitched yet.

Let’s really get into it.

Blumenhaus. Apartamento. Monocle. Never Too Small. Elle Décoration. The Socialite Family. Apartment Therapy. Milk Magazine. Design Anthology. World of Interiors. AD.

I’ve never pitched my work. I don’t entirely know how it happens. But I know that what I create — the interiors, the writing, the art, the styling, the photographs — speaks to these audiences.

I know because I am these audiences. The person who moved somewhere and built a life that looks like nothing she’s seen elsewhere but feels entirely like herself.

If you’re an editor and you’ve found this: Hello. Let’s talk.

The Book.

I’m putting this in writing for the first time. I want to write a book about feeling at home — anywhere you are.

Not a design book in the traditional sense. Something that lives at the intersection of space, sensory experience, identity, and belonging. A book for people whose lives are made of more than one country, more than one culture, more than one version of themselves — and who have never found a room, an interior style, or a book, that reflected all of it back to them.

I have a point of view on how space holds identity. How a room can embrace who you are, or unintentionally erase you. How the objects you choose, the colors you design around, the way you display what you love — all of it is a form of cultural expression, whether you name it that or not.

I think about this constantly. I think it’s a book. And I think I’m the person to write it.

A Few Closing Thoughts

I believe the way a space feels is a form of cultural expression. I believe that people who live between cultures are often the most exquisitely sensitive to environment — because we’ve had to be.

Because no space was automatically ours. Because belonging always required some translation.

That’s who I design for. That’s who I write for. That’s who I am.

I spent years being careful about how much of this I said out loud. Careful about what I claimed. Careful about whether I’d earned it.

I’m done being careful.

The right things are already finding me. And now I’m done gatekeeping the rest.

If any of this resonated — as a potential collaborator, an editor, a brand, or as a reader who recognized something, I’d love to hear — in the comments or by reply.

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