DEP FASHION SHOW 2005 | “A SYMPHONY OF COLORS”

With the theme “A Symphony of Colors”, director Viet Tu experimented with evolving the Dep Fashion Show series into a seamless performance experience, where fashion, music, lighting, and architectural space converged through the art of storytelling. Moving beyond a conventional fashion show format, the program was staged as an independent theatrical production: while each designer introduced the audience to their distinct aesthetic world, all elements blended into a unified narrative arc.

The project's defining highlight originated from the performance space itself. Nestled within the atrium of the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum - an antique French architectural landmark characterized by its moss-covered walls - director Viet Tu and the creative team transformed the entire venue into an open stage environment. Lighting, performance art, and notably, video art were masterfully integrated to engineer a surreal backdrop, crafting a distinctive visual identity for the show. The boundary between the stage and the audience was progressively blurred, placing viewers at the center of the artistic space and making them an integral part of the experience. Eliminating the conventional runway structure, the architectural environment itself served as the stage, unlocking a fundamentally different fashion experience for the audience.

The three collections by Cong Tri, Ngo Thai Uyen, and Takayuki Sawamura were developed as three chapters of a single narrative. Cong Tri’s “Hoa Bat Tu” (Immortal Flower) opened the show with the imagery of a robust young man, the distinctive sound of hair clippers, and a surreal performance set to DJ Tri Minh's music. Ngo Thai Uyen followed with the imagery of cocoons and butterfly wings, narrating a story of the life cycle and maturation. Takayuki Sawamura concluded the journey with a tropical forest atmosphere, where models broke away from traditional staging to dance and interact directly with the spatial environment.

These three worlds were interconnected through sound, lighting, movement, and highly cinematic scene transitions, creating a “symphony of colors” both visually and emotionally. This very structure propelled Dep Fashion Show 2005 beyond a mere fashion presentation, establishing it as a market-leading fashion show series and an intersection of fashion and performance art that endured for the next decade.

For director Viet Tu, this stood as one of the early projects that defined his approach to the event production market using the language of contemporary art, a philosophy he has continuously advanced throughout his career via iconic, large-scale artistic projects.