Trang Nguyen on Hosting
London’s First Áo Dài Fashion Week
London’s First Áo Dài Fashion Week
Wearing Culture, Living Heritage: Trang Nguyen on London’s First Áo Dài Fashion Week
From Vietnam National Television (VTV) to the London stage, Trang Nguyen has built a career around stories that cross borders. Ahead of London’s first Áo Dài Fashion Week, she talks about fashion, identity and why culture needs to keep moving.
The Áo Dài has travelled before. From the streets of Vietnam to diasporic communities around the world, Vietnam’s iconic dress has crossed generations, borders and contexts. This autumn, it arrives in London in a new form: on the runway, in the hands of contemporary designers and in front of international audiences.
At the centre of the occasion will be Vietnamese broadcaster and cultural event producer Trang Nguyen, who will be the host of London’s first Áo Dài Fashion Week.
The Áo Dài has travelled before. From the streets of Vietnam to diasporic communities around the world, Vietnam’s iconic dress has crossed generations, borders and contexts. This autumn, it arrives in London in a new form: on the runway, in the hands of contemporary designers and in front of international audiences.
At the centre of the occasion will be Vietnamese broadcaster and cultural event producer Trang Nguyen, who will be the host of London’s first Áo Dài Fashion Week.
Vietnamese broadcaster and cultural event producer Trang Nguyen
- The main host of London Áo Dài Fashion Week 2026
For Trang, the event is about more than just fashion or culture. She is less interested in treating it as a finished cultural artefact than in asking what it can become.
“We talk a lot about preserving culture. I’ve spent years finding my own ways to do that”, she says, “but the answer, for me, turned out to be quite simple: culture works best when I dive into it. When I breathe it in through everyday life, live with it, and give what I inherit the room to evolve.”
That instinct has shaped a career spanning television, international events, science, diplomacy and cultural programming.
- The main host of London Áo Dài Fashion Week 2026
For Trang, the event is about more than just fashion or culture. She is less interested in treating it as a finished cultural artefact than in asking what it can become.
“We talk a lot about preserving culture. I’ve spent years finding my own ways to do that”, she says, “but the answer, for me, turned out to be quite simple: culture works best when I dive into it. When I breathe it in through everyday life, live with it, and give what I inherit the room to evolve.”
That instinct has shaped a career spanning television, international events, science, diplomacy and cultural programming.
Host Trang Nguyen on stage at the Vietnam-UK Festival 2023
Her career began in Vietnam, where she spent years at VTV as a producer, editor and presenter. Her passion for telling cultural stories took her from cities to mountainous regions, across borders and time zones, and even into a war zone. Her trip to South Sudan in 2018 marked an important milestone, when she became the first Vietnamese VTV field presenter to cover Vietnam’s UN peacekeeping mission, bringing the stories of Vietnamese peacekeepers to audiences back home. Alongside national TV campaigns and major live broadcasts, she also produced and hosted international cultural programmes, finding stories that connected Vietnam with audiences far beyond its borders.
Without a stage, still telling stories - Trang in South Sudan, 2018.
Switching to science and technology communication, her work at the VinFuture Prize gave her the chance to blend science with culturally-informed storytelling to approach global audiences.
A move into science and technology communication gave her another lens through which to tell human stories. At the VinFuture Prize, she produced a series of conversations with some of the world’s leading scientists and researchers, looking beyond their breakthroughs to the people behind them - their roots, the cultures that shaped them and the challenges they had overcome. By bringing those stories to the foreground, she found a more human way into a field that can often feel technical and distant, making science more accessible through the people who dedicate their lives to it.
Then came London.
A move into science and technology communication gave her another lens through which to tell human stories. At the VinFuture Prize, she produced a series of conversations with some of the world’s leading scientists and researchers, looking beyond their breakthroughs to the people behind them - their roots, the cultures that shaped them and the challenges they had overcome. By bringing those stories to the foreground, she found a more human way into a field that can often feel technical and distant, making science more accessible through the people who dedicate their lives to it.
Then came London.
In 2019, Trang became a British Government Chevening Scholar.
A British Government Chevening Scholarship brought her to the UK, where she studied Multimedia Journalism before completing an MSc in Marketing and Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her career expanded into international communications, while her work as a host continued to connect her with Vietnamese and international audiences.
She has joined the production of the annual Vietnam International Awards since her first year in London, as well as the Vietnam-UK High-Level Economic Conference in 2025 during General Secretary Tô Lâm’s historic UK visit. In 2026, she will host London’s first Áo Dài Fashion Week. Working with Vietnamese cultural and community organisations in the UK has brought her closer to questions of identity and belonging.
She has joined the production of the annual Vietnam International Awards since her first year in London, as well as the Vietnam-UK High-Level Economic Conference in 2025 during General Secretary Tô Lâm’s historic UK visit. In 2026, she will host London’s first Áo Dài Fashion Week. Working with Vietnamese cultural and community organisations in the UK has brought her closer to questions of identity and belonging.
Trang Nguyen presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Michael Mainelli, then Lord Mayor of London, at the 2024 Vietnam International Awards.
For Trang, the Áo Dài sits perfectly within that conversation.
“I love that the Áo Dài has never really been one fixed thing,” she says. “Every generation has worn it and interpreted it differently. That’s what makes it alive.”
And perhaps that is the most interesting question London’s first Áo Dài Fashion Week can ask: What happens when tradition meets one of the world’s most experimental fashion cities?
Rather than treating heritage as something untouchable, Trang sees cultural events as opportunities to create encounters between generations, between communities and between Vietnam and the wider world.
Her own career has often occupied that space.
“Producing or hosting an event are both great opportunities for me to create a connection between the story, the people on stage and everyone watching.”
That philosophy is particularly relevant to a fashion event.
Fashion can communicate culture without translation. A silhouette, a fabric, a colour or a familiar detail can carry memories that words sometimes cannot.
For Vietnamese people living abroad, the Áo Dài can hold a particularly complicated kind of nostalgia. It can be a reminder of family, childhood, celebrations and home, while also becoming something new in a different country.
Trang is interested in that tension.
“What I find exciting is seeing Vietnamese culture being interpreted by people who have grown up somewhere else,” she says. “It doesn’t have to look exactly the same to still belong to us.”
London feels like the right place for this experiment. The city has always been a meeting point for cultures and creative ideas. Bringing the Áo Dài into that environment allows Vietnamese fashion to enter a wider conversation, not as a symbol from the past, but as part of the present.
For Trang, cultural storytelling is ultimately about more than building bridges.
“It’s not just about building the bridge,” she says. “The thought of inviting people across it excites me.”
As the first Áo Dài Fashion Week approaches, that invitation feels particularly timely.
The question is no longer simply how to preserve the Áo Dài.
It is what we can do with it next.
“I love that the Áo Dài has never really been one fixed thing,” she says. “Every generation has worn it and interpreted it differently. That’s what makes it alive.”
And perhaps that is the most interesting question London’s first Áo Dài Fashion Week can ask: What happens when tradition meets one of the world’s most experimental fashion cities?
Rather than treating heritage as something untouchable, Trang sees cultural events as opportunities to create encounters between generations, between communities and between Vietnam and the wider world.
Her own career has often occupied that space.
“Producing or hosting an event are both great opportunities for me to create a connection between the story, the people on stage and everyone watching.”
That philosophy is particularly relevant to a fashion event.
Fashion can communicate culture without translation. A silhouette, a fabric, a colour or a familiar detail can carry memories that words sometimes cannot.
For Vietnamese people living abroad, the Áo Dài can hold a particularly complicated kind of nostalgia. It can be a reminder of family, childhood, celebrations and home, while also becoming something new in a different country.
Trang is interested in that tension.
“What I find exciting is seeing Vietnamese culture being interpreted by people who have grown up somewhere else,” she says. “It doesn’t have to look exactly the same to still belong to us.”
London feels like the right place for this experiment. The city has always been a meeting point for cultures and creative ideas. Bringing the Áo Dài into that environment allows Vietnamese fashion to enter a wider conversation, not as a symbol from the past, but as part of the present.
For Trang, cultural storytelling is ultimately about more than building bridges.
“It’s not just about building the bridge,” she says. “The thought of inviting people across it excites me.”
As the first Áo Dài Fashion Week approaches, that invitation feels particularly timely.
The question is no longer simply how to preserve the Áo Dài.
It is what we can do with it next.