The invite read: “Lacquerware Party is to Tupperware Party as Carrie Bradshaw is to Carol Brady.”
We figured we’d find a pop-culture bacchanalia: Well-coiffed ladies burping lids onto plastic bowls and Sarah Jessica Parker toddling about atop Jimmy Choo stilettos, all fueled by whiskey sours and cosmopolitans. We figured wrong.
What actually took place on a Saturday evening in May, in a graceful Queen Anne on a tree-lined street just north of Lawrence Avenue in Chicago, was far more sophisticated than that.
Several dozen friends of the home’s owners — Jeffrey Smith and Robert Rodi — sipped lemon grass-perfumed drinks dubbed “saigotinis,” nibbled coconut shrimp, candied ginger and a French cheese named Saint Albray while Verve Remixed played in the background.
There were no pop-culture goddesses.
There was, though, a technicolored array of items imported from Vietnam and transported to Chicago by the owners of Saigoniste, an 8-month-old New York shop celebrating contemporary Vietnamese design. Lacquered bowls in fuchsia and Mango Orange shared space in the garden with trays done in a Mountain-Dew green and accented with silver leaf, salt-and-pepper cellars in faux tortoiseshell and hand-appliqued silk-covered pillows — all drawing inspiration more from Mondrian than Ming.
How all of these items arrived in Chicago sounds simple enough if you ask Hugh Duthie, who owns Saigoniste with Cynthia Ashworth and Natalie Vukosa.
“One of our customers said, ‘Hey, I would love to actually bring your product to Chicago and have kind of an event for you guys . . . almost like an old-fashioned Tupperware party but with a kind of really modern fun twist,'” Duthie recalled.
“So we loaded it all in boxes and schlepped it to Chicago,” said Duthie, who traveled here with Vukosa. “We were the king and queen of excess baggage at LaGuardia.
“We think it’s such a novel way of taking a funky little New York boutique to where the customers are.”
That “funky” boutique is actually a 900-square-foot store on Mulberry Street at the edge of New York’s Little Italy neighborhood. Saigoniste also has a Web site, which has developed a number of online fans across the country, particularly here. That was one reason Duthie and friends decided to launch a series of home parties in Chicago.
The other was homeowner Smith, whom Duthie has known for years from their work in advertising and marketing.
“What’s really fun about the stuff that Saigoniste markets is that it fuses so well with traditional decor. It adds a real fun splash of color,” said Smith, a marketing executive.
Smith had just stirred up another batch of the store’s signature drink, a lemon grass-infused vodka creation called a “saigotini.” Rodi, author of “Kept Boy” and other novels, took a break from his evening’s tasks — “the door and drinks” — to chat about his latest writing projects, including a non-fiction book on “Americans’ ability to have one obsession that takes over their lives,” said Rodi, “everything from golf to Star Trek.”
Driven by color
Out in the garden, Duthie was explaining to guests Sally Turner and Biff Gentsch, how the elements of their spring/summer and fall/winter collections are pulled together.
Seasons are defined by colors, with silver and black a constant. This season’s colors? A mango orange, a citrus green called Acid Grass, a fuschia called Bon Bon and a sea blue called Nha Trang, the color of the waters at a beach in Vietnam. “We actually tried to match as close as we could the turquoise that you see there,” Duthie said.
Saigoniste, he said, “is very driven by color.”
It is also very driven by shapes that you don’t see other places in Asia, in part because of the mix of Asian and French influences.
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The other strong influence? Saigoniste’s owners.
Some 15 different Vietnamese suppliers and designers create products for Saigoniste. The owners work with them to build on traditional designs and techniques or transform them. And while they may use whimsical colors, they also incorporate such luxe materials as silver and mother of pearl.
They have, for example, urged designers to enlarge smaller lacquered rice and noodle bowls to suit an American penchant for tossed salads. Another bowl, its exterior covered in a mosaic of duck-shell pieces, originally had a black interior. Saigoniste’s team does them with blue, orange or yellow interiors (medium, $75; large, $95).
And, then there is their take on faux tortue. Artisans already were doing a real-looking fake tortoiseshell, but Saigoniste asked them to do it in “colors you would never find in nature.” Tortue tinted — in blue or orange — shows up as salad servers ($35 a set) and as chopsticks ($12) with a rest ($4).
“We do believe there’s always going to be some shapes and some pieces that are classics,” Duthie said, “but we work to really put our imprimatur on things so that you’re actually buying into a wonderful line and collection rather than bits and pieces from here and there.”
The new `must-have’
About 10 percent of the items in the store “are actually stuff you literally can find on the shelf over there,” he said. “But almost everything else we’ve said, `Hey, this needs to be a different size or we want it in different colors.'”
What will be a hit with customers can be full of surprises. The saltcellars — the tortue version, for example, is $30 a set — have been popular in New York as well as at the Chicago house party.
“We weren’t sure in America if anyone used saltcellars,” said Duthie. “And people tell me that they use them for chili powder, cinnamon and other spices.”
The Chicago party, Saigoniste’s first such house party, was held in early May and followed by stops in Minneapolis (“It was a 1967, Brady Bunch-era house in Edina,” said Duthie), Los Angeles and Toronto.
“It’s a great sort of thing to do from a marketing standpoint especially when customers buy stuff online and they never get to experience the store or meet the owners,” he said. “[It] sort of puts a bit of a face on sort of a faceless entity.”
Buy first
The genesis of Saigoniste began in Toronto where Duthie and Ashworth met at college. Their careers in advertising took them to London, then New York. Then about four years ago, they decided to take a trip to Vietnam.
“We just fell in love with Vietnam and also saw this amazing stuff that you just don’t see over here,” said Duthie. Initially, they considered importing stuff then found out that there was “a trade embargo on Vietnam as a legacy of the war and essentially, you just couldn’t do it.”
When the U.S. changed the trade status of Vietnam in 2001, they headed back to Vietnam to research what was available. “We actually ended up doing all the buying for our first season while we were over there,” said Duthie. “We got back to New York then realized we had to find a name, find a location and open up this business and we did — on Nov. 1.”
Duthie, who was a strategic planning director at a New York ad agency, now divides his time between Saigoniste and his own brand-consulting business. Ashworth is a client services director at another New York ad agency. Vukosa, originally from Australia, also was working in advertising and recently joined the team.
Since opening, the shop has earned mentions in a range of glossy magazines, from Elle Decor and House and Garden to Lucky.
Of course, America’s fascination with all things Asian — from feng shui to bubble tea — has helped. So has the wave of goods arriving from Vietnam. In fact, the trade publication Home Furnishing News featured Vietnam in their March issue, noting that 2002’s $1.8 billion in imports was a 71 percent jump over the previous year’s.
A lot of the Asian economies are emerging markets and the quality of their manufacturing, the quality of their design is definitely improving, said Derek Miller, vice president, international, for the Rosemont-based International Housewares Association. “Vietnam is an emerging market and every year they become stronger.”
“Nobody has really done anything that is, in our minds, design-driven, higher-end homewares from Vietnam in any sort of consistent way,” said Duthie.
“You see a lot of the inexpensive cheap things that are made in Vietnam, but not the more upscale,” said Vukosa, noting that their Boomerang, a 6-foot-tall mahogany lamp with a silk lampshade ($325), is a good seller.
Plans are to add more furniture to the store’s mix of goods. Already, they are working with Nguyen Bao Toan who, according to Vukosa, supplied props for the movie “The Quiet American.”
On top of that, Duthie and team are talking to Canadian retailer Holt Renfrew about featuring their goods.
After Toronto, the house parties will go on hiatus until fall. “This is kind of test driving the idea to see if it actually works,” he said. “And we now are convinced it does. And I think we’re going to do it again in the fall.”
Whether they schlep any of their larger items, say that 6-foot-tall lamp or a motor scooter or two, remains to be seen.
“We just sold our first 1964 Vespa 150 the other day,” he said.
When sweets meet zest
You have a boutique loaded with contemporary stuff from Vietnam opening in New York. In ultra-trendy NoLIta — as in, North of Little Italy — no less.
You want to make a splash.
“We basically e-mailed all our friends in Vietnam and said, ‘If we wanted to have kind of something that’s sort of authentic and Vietnamese what would you do?’ ” recalled Saigoniste’s Hugh Duthie. “And we were bombarded with 18 million recipes for different things. And someone sort of suggested: What you want is a really simple lemon grass-infused cocktail.”
According to Duthie, after a night of trial and error, they came up with this, which the Tribune Test Kitchen adapted for four. You may want to adjust the sweet-sour balance to suit your taste.
Saigotini
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
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10 stalks lemon grass, trimmed, tough outer layers removed
1 tablespoon sugar or sugar syrup, or to taste
1 cup citron vodka
1/2 cup fresh-squeezed or bottled Key lime juice or regular lime juice
Ice cubes
1/4 to 1/2 cup club soda
1. Place half the trimmed lemon grass stalks in a pitcher or cocktail shaker. Press stalks with the back of a wooden spoon or pestle to release oils. Add sugar. Press again.
2. Add vodka, lime juice and ice. Shake to blend. Add club soda. Strain into four stemmed glasses. Serve each with a stalk of lemon grass.
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Saigoniste is at 239 Mulberry St., New York; 212-925-4610. Their Web site is www.saigoniste.com.