It takes a lifetime of struggle, learning, and growth before you reach a point where you can stand as you are—unapologetically and confidently yourself. This journey of acceptance is one of life’s greatest challenges. Each of us is trying—day in, day out—to figure out how to be more comfortable in our own skin. However, given how difficult, sensitive, and complicated this journey is, a lot of people fail to achieve any worthwhile sense of self-acceptance. Tiên is different. I first came across her through a video for Miss Cosmo, a national beauty pageant in Vietnam. To be the only mixed-race, dark-skinned Vietnamese beauty queen in the group was impressive on its own. However, as I listened to her speech and heard the unwavering conviction in her voice, I really began to appreciate just how momentous a story she was speaking into existence through her spirit and her strength.
Tiên’s tale began when her Cameroonian father met her Vietnamese mother in Cambodia. As a high-ranking official in the United Nations, Tiên’s dad was in Cambodia building a mission in the country. While there, he used to frequent a bar that Tiên’s aunt worked in. The pair regularly spoke and it was through these conversations that Tiên’s aunt learned of his character and background. She eventually asked if he was looking for a girl. Tiên’s father objected. He didn’t want a girl. He wanted a wife. With that, Tiên’s aunt said she knew just the person, and calling on her sister, said she’d found her the perfect husband.
When Tiên recalled this first meeting between her parents, she burst into laughter. As she put it, it was her mother’s first time ever seeing, let alone speaking to a black man. They communicated in English and despite the mix of wonder and hesitation a woman from An Giang must’ve felt encountering someone so vastly different from her, Tiên told me that her parents fell in love at first sight. Marriage quickly followed and in the latter part of the two years in which her parents lived in Cambodia, Tiên’s mother became pregnant. While Tiên’s father needed to return to Cameroon for work, Tiên’s mother thought long and hard before deciding she’d rather go back to Vietnam and raise her child there. While the spouses remained in contact, in the years that followed they would be separated by countries, borders, as well as the ideologies that define people’s understanding of themselves and one another. Tiên would be the one to bear the brunt of a lot of this.
Even before she was born, Tiên was already being treated as if she didn’t belong. By the time her mother returned to An Giang, people in their village were already aware that the baby in her belly wasn’t from Vietnam, and so a few proposed that she be born somewhere else—away from where they were. The talks became serious enough that Tiên’s mother and grandma had to stop and consider what they were hearing. However, eventually Tiên’s grandma made up her mind. In effect, what she said was, “She’s my granddaughter, so regardless of if the rest of you like it or not, she’s going to be born in An Giang.” And with that, Tiên was born. Her name means “fairy” in Vietnamese, while her father gave her the Cameroonian name, Nahfeh, after his mother. While the dichotomy of these backgrounds would pull her apart in many directions as she grew up, one thing remained for certain: Tiên was destined to enchant the world no matter what odds were stacked against her.
Having grown up as a mixed-raced kid in Tokyo, I went through my share of experiences that made me feel as if I didn’t belong. Going into my talk with Tiên, I was certain she had similar anecdotes but what surprised me were her reflections of the beauty of her childhood in An Giang. She always had friends and they’d play in the lush, rural countryside and around the village they called home. Tiên was always bursting with ideas for different games. One of their favourites was role playing where they’d make-believe they were sellers and buyers at the market. Through this constant creation of ways to pass the time, Tiên became something of a leader in her group. Of course, there were those who thought otherwise.
Racism was an unavoidable part of Tiên’s youth, and she was regularly called black and made fun of because her body was different from her peers. One day, she reached her tipping point. Coming home to her mother, Tiên complained about how people never stopped calling her black, and then seeing her mother’s calm, almost detached expression, she went on to demand why she never protected her from all the verbal abuse she’d received ever since she was a baby. Tiên’s mother, remaining calm, got up and went into another room. When she returned she held a mirror. Holding it up to Tiên’s face, she asked her daughter to repeat what they called her. When Tiên uttered that five-letter word that for so long she’d perceived as some defect or handicap, her mother simply replied, “Black. That’s right. You are black—So what are you going to do?” That statement served as the greatest lesson her mother taught her about identity. She was who she was and there was nothing she could do but accept that.
For the first eight years of her life, Tiên never met her father. They kept in touch through letters but given that the mail had to travel between An Giang and Cameroon, it wasn’t exactly as simple as writing back and forth. While letters may have been sparse, Tiên learned a lot about her father thanks to them. He was a busy man given his ranking in the United Nations, and as the years passed her father appeared to Tiên as someone who was larger than life. Not only because of his physical size in the photographs she saw of him, but also due to the vast world he seemed to be a part of that was far from anything she could recognise from her village in An Giang. That’s why when her mother told her that her father would be making the trip to visit them, Tiên was as excited as she was nervous.
The day he arrived, Tiên happened to be playing at her grandmother’s house. As the story goes, her father entered their home expecting to finally meet his daughter only for her to be missing. When Tiên finally showed up, he’d been waiting for a while and was getting antsy, though once the two met everything settled down. For the duration of her father’s visit, Tiên was equally impressed by the manner in which he carried himself and appreciative of everything he did not only for her, but for the people in An Giang. This brings me to the greatest lesson her father imparted on her. In contrast to what her mother had told her, it came not through words but actions. While many of the people in Tiên’s village had grown used to seeing her around, when her father showed up, he became an even larger figure of attraction. Like fans of a celebrity, people followed him wherever he went, and rather than shying away from any of this attention, he gladly welcomed it.
One of Tiên’s most vivid memories of this was when her father showed up at her school. Asking her English teacher to translate, he told Tiên’s class the story of her background and mixed heritage while answering any questions the students might have. It didn’t end there. When all the kids were out on the playground during breaktime, he joined them in their play. Tiên still sees it clearly: the swarm surrounding her dad, the intense clamour and excitement that made it impossible for Tiên to get through the crowd of animated children. What struck her most was their joy, how despite his innate differences, her father never let that be a cause for separation. Instead, he accepted his race, identity, and skin colour for what it was. Doing so allowed him to connect with the children at her school rather than remaining as a stranger or outsider. At that moment, Tiên recognised the true power of acceptance. She also began to understand a universal truth: while racists exist, many people are also just uneducated and curious about the people who aren’t like them. In the same way that her and her father are treated with interest in An Giang, a Vietnamese person would experience the same in Cameroon. Once she understood this, Tiên says that the journey of self-acceptance became much easier. She stopped trying to define herself as much. She realised she is who she is. She’s Tiên.
Tragically, Tiên’s first meeting with her father would also be her last. Two years after his trip to An Giang, he became extremely ill and passed away when Tiên was ten. While they remained in contact during this period and even tried to meet—on that occasion in Thailand for ease of travel—ultimatley, her father was too sick to make the journey. During this period, Tiên recalled how her father pleaded with her and her mum to leave An Giang for England. A large part of this had to do with wanting a better education and life for Tiên, but they were adamant that Vietnam was home and that’s where they’d remain. While it’s possible to consider the fate that befell Tiên and her father as tragic, in another testament to her character, as she recounted this period of her life to me it was with little regret or sadness. Her large, beaming smile never left her face when she recalled that period—albeit shortlived—that she was able to spend with her dad. Later, when I asked whether she’d ever been to Cameroon, she told me that while she used to feel an obligation to visit her father’s country, eventually she realised that your parents are always in you. Until she hears Cameroon calling, she doesn’t feel the need to go. It’s a beautiful pearl of wisdom. One of many throughout my conversation with Tiên and it’s no wonder why she’s been able to remain so graceful even after everything she’s experienced.
As Tiên grew older, her passion for arts and design also deepened. She’d always been a creative child and loved all forms of artistic expression but what really captured her imagination was fashion. Initially, she got into the world as a means of making a bit of pocket money. The aunties in her village often got Tiên to buy buttons and fabrics at the market which they could use for sowing. Through this, Tiên became like their unofficial assistant and in exchange for her services, they’d pay her one or two-thousand VND. Apart from that, she also got into fashion out of necessity. As she grew physically, she simply couldn't fit into regular Vietnamese-sized clothing. She started making her own clothes and in this way developed a keen interest in custom-made items. While Tiên wanted to expand her fashion design knowledge in university, due to her family’s financial situation, she wasn’t able to attend straight out of high school. She admitted how much this disappointed her, but rather than wallow in misery, Tiên found another way to move forward. By then her mother had borne a son with a new man, and so recognising her responsibility as an older sister, she was determined to start working and saving money for his future. In order to do so, she decided she needed to leave An Giang and head to a bigger city.
Finding a job in Saigon proved more difficult than Tiên predicted. While many residents of the city were kind and treated her as an equal, there was a level of undeniable racism among a few. Adding onto this, as someone who’d grown up in the Mekong Delta, Tiên was used to having family cook, clean, and take care of other household chores for her. In Saigon, she was tasked with figuring everything out on her own. Undismayed, she learned how to take care of herself, and thanks to her determination she eventually landed a job as an office assistant. Though she found work and had some money coming in, Tiên’s dream of pursuing fashion never waned. In a testament to this passion, she asked family members whether she could borrow money for her studies to which they agreed. From that point forward, between balancing university, a job, and household chores, Tiên’s days were packed. While it was stressful, she spoke about how the period taught her the value of money. Working so much and yet still having to save, support herself, and return what she owed her family gave her a perspective on finances that most people her age simply didn’t have. Having said all that, learning about fashion made all the stress worthwhile. Eventually, after three years at her first office job, Tiên moved into working as a shop assistant at BOX SHOP. Her first real role in the fashion industry, she made sure she went above and beyond which didn’t go unnoticed by her manager. Tiên was given an additional role of taking photos of the products and when she impressed with this task as well, her responsibilities extended to assembling a team for the brand as well.
Since moving to Saigon, Tiên had grown in leaps and bounds. While credit is due to her family and friends for their support, at the end of the day so much of her growth comes as a result of her own effort. She was always on the lookout for more work to gain more experience in the industry, so that whenever she found openings as a fashion designer, she was quick to apply. At one point this meant she was working at one brand in District 1 in the morning, driving to District 7 during her lunch break to work a couple hours for another brand, heading to university in the evening, and finally sewing her own clothes for selling online once she got home. This frenetic, near obsessive period taught Tiên a lot of what she knows about fashion design given the practical applications she learned outside of her university studies. It also proved that no matter how exhausting her days and nights might get, she can handle the grind. Along this blur of a journey, two changes occurred in Tiên’s life. First, she started Nafi Suits in 2018.
Leveraging everything she’d learned over the years studying and working in fashion design, Tiên opened the inaugural Nafi Suits on Nguyễn Đình Chiểu street in District 1. Standing for nature, art, fashion, and inspiration, the name is not only a reference to her Cameroonian name, but also a reflection of the purpose behind her work and the message she wants to share with the world. As a tailor, Tiên spoke of how from the beginning, her business relied on a mutual collaboration with her customers. Usually the ordeal goes one of two ways: someone wants a suit tailored in a specific way or someone doesn’t know what they want so they need Tiên to guide them through the process. Either way, what matters most for Tiên is trust and good energy. Trust is crucial as the customer needs to trust Tiên to execute their vision while good energy is vital because the process of tailoring a suit should be fun and enjoyable. Without these components, tailoring a suit becomes challenging and tedious. Besides these factors, Tiên also implements elements from An Giang into her tailoring. Most notably is a special fabric called “Lãnh Mỹ A” which is dyed using mặc nưa berries to produce a lustrous, silk-like texture and deep black colour. Besides that, she also uses “Khăn Rằn”—which translates to striped towel or scarf—the more humble counterpart to Lãnh Mỹ A with roots in Cambodia’s culture and clothing. The girl who left An Giang had never forgotten her roots, and with the opening of Nafi Suits she was able to pay homage to her hometown. Thanks to reasons like this and Tiên’s exceptional skill as a tailor, Nafi Suits became successful and she even made enough money to relocate to a larger outlet in Thảo Điền. However, this success would also be her downfall.
A larger store meant more responsibilities and things to worry about. While Tiên had never been one to shy away from work, the type of work she now had to focus on wasn’t anything she particularly liked. There was marketing which meant hours spent trying to strike gold on social media. There was managing staff which meant less time tailoring and connecting with customers. Then adding the uncertainty that Covid caused, after a while Tiên said she “felt like a trash can that everyday people kept throwing trash into.” The nail in the coffin was when mold started appearing throughout the space they were renting, and yet their landlord refused to do anything about it. At that point, Tiên had to pause and reflect. She’d gotten into fashion design because she loved making clothes. Somewhere along the line, she’d lost sight of this very simple desire. She made her choice and closed Nafi Suits in Thảo Điền and began a tailor operation out of her apartment. Stripping back her business to its essentials, what she regained was her love of her job. Just her, the tailors she works with, and a customer. That was all that mattered. In 2024, she left the apartment operation and opened a store in District 10. A charming space complete with art on the walls, a nicely curated display of he suits, and a comfy couch where Tiên and I had our talk.
The second major change that occurred in Tiên’s life came in 2017 when a colleague asked her if she’d ever thought about being a beauty queen. While Tiên had never planned on becoming a beauty queen, the idea intrigued her. She thought long and hard about the opportunity before finally talking to her mother who encouraged her to give it a shot. Tiên started by posting pictures online. These quickly went viral and led to opportunities as a model and influencer. While everything was going well in her new career, she also had her fair share of online trolls who criticised her appearance. Of course, that was never enough to deter Tiên, who carried with her not only the lessons from her parents, but also a conviction and confidence in who she was. Having said that, she also made a conscious effort to exercise and better herself however she could. During Miss Universe Vietnam, one of her first beauty pageantries, this meant she was up in the morning exercising. Incidentally, one of the judges would also be awake for her morning workout and the two often bumped into each other, which Tiên believes is a reason why she ended up winning the title of Miss Sports. Besides that, there was Miss Supranational held in Korea where she received the Miss Talent award after she handmade dresses for all the other contestants. While these instances point to Tiên’s consistent achievements through her career as a beauty queen, none left more of a mark than Miss Cosmo.
The last beauty pageant Tiên took part in, Miss Cosmo is the culmination of all her life’s work until then. The reality was, she was getting frustrated with the inherent competitiveness of pageantry at that point, not to mention how controlling organisers and other authority figures could be. As a result, going into it she knew it would be her final run but she was going to put her heart and soul into it. There were numerous ways in which Tiên made sure of this. For starters, a lot of beauty contests feature a reality show component, which occasionally involve setting up teams between the contestants. Chosen as a team leader, Tiên made it a point to choose other girls who didn’t exactly fit the stereotypical beauty queen mould in regards to their physical appearance. Then there was one portion where contestants were tasked with performing on stage. Tiên decided she was going to dance for this. Despite how much of an outwardly friendly and extroverted person she might appear, dancing had always scared her. This went back to her childhood when she wouldn’t be allowed to perform onstage because of her skin colour. While she always found a workaround by setting up impromptu performances with friends where she engaged in stage performances, the rejection left a lasting mark. Tiên wanted to get over this inbuilt fear and she used Miss Cosmo as the platform to do so. Tiên chose Nina Simone’s “I Feel Good” to accompany her dancing as she let loose. At the same time, she also mixed in some performance art by dipping her arms into buckets of paint as a means of expressing how she wanted to bring more colour into her life.
While Tiên impressed with her confidence, conscientiousness, and creativity during Miss Cosmo, nothing struck me more than her speech. You can find it online and it’s one of those clips that give you goosebumps, watching someone who’s completely in their element and unafraid to show it. The speech begins with a nod to a lyric from the popular Vietnamese song “Con Gái Miền Tây”, which loosely translates to Mekong Delta girls. From there, she goes onto explain her Vietnamese-Cameroonian heritage before declaring that no matter their background, she wants everyone to know that they’re magic. It’s a powerful statement from someone who’s dealt with the painful marginalisation of racism even before she was born. However, it’s clear that Tiên has never let her background define her, nor has she ever used it as an excuse or reason to feel ashamed. Instead, through the lessons her parents taught her—one through words, another with action—and through her own self-acceptance, she’s become what most people can only dream of. She’s become herself. She’s become Tiên.
