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"  Viet-Nu Nguyen is a born collector. If her array of figurines depicting everything from sushi to giraffes to a Hawaiian-lei&amp;#039;d President Obama didn&amp;#039;t tip you off, then the art pieces strewn around her 1961 Richard Neutra home\u2014and her closet, bursting with vintage treasures\u2014should make it abundantly clear. Having spent the past five and a half years as the curator of the 1,500-plus-piece Ovitz Family Collection, Nguyen, 33, is well-suited to the business of acquisition. For Creative Artists Agency cofounder Michael Ovitz, she&amp;#039;s netted pieces from Sterling Ruby and Isa Genzken; currently she&amp;#039;s at work on a project for the collection by conceptual pioneer Carol Bove. When the up-and-coming player on L.A.&amp;#039;s art scene isn&amp;#039;t making high-profile deals, she&amp;#039;s disproving the idea that women in the art world\u2014to say nothing of intellectuals of all stripes\u2014are relegated to shapeless, all-black silhouettes. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always had an eclectic wardrobe,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And I like having that sort of confusion on a certain level; I don&amp;#039;t like being able to pin down my style. I&amp;#039;m just sort of all over the place.&amp;quot; The same goes for her art collection, which tends toward the outr\u00E9: a pie-pan sculpture by Sara Greenberger Rafferty adorns one wall, and an iridescent Mark Flood painting hangs in her office. A decade ago, Nguyen, who&amp;#039;d received an undergraduate degree in urban studies from Brown University, was pursuing a master&amp;#039;s in design studies at Harvard&amp;#039;s Graduate School of Design when she noticed that &amp;quot;the female architects would always dress like men. It was sad to me that these progressive thinkers, who were obviously aesthetically minded, felt the need to just blend in fashionwise. I think I really started to have fun with clothes around that time.&amp;quot; She spent her study breaks wandering the aisles of Riccardi, acquiring Comme des Gar\u00E7ons at slashed prices. Postgraduation, she headed for the West Coast and worked as an assistant director at the now-shuttered Sandroni Rey gallery. Though her surroundings might have changed, her style didn&amp;#039;t. &amp;quot;L.A. is certainly more casual,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I can get away with wearing ratty T-shirts and jeans, but I probably would dress the same wherever I lived.&amp;quot; Click here to get an inside look of Viet-Nu Nguyen&amp;#039;s home! Combing through her overstuffed closet, she pulls out plenty by the aforementioned names, but also vintage Guy Laroche, Hanae Mori, Emanuel Ungaro, and Ossie Clark, mixed with newer pieces from Marni and Proenza Schouler. Of a rainbow-hued &amp;#039;80s Emanuel Ungaro dress, she notes: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s bright and slightly garish, and I feel like a sassy secretary every time I wear it.&amp;quot; A pinup-style Louis F\u00E9raud &amp;#039;50s romper was her first purchase from C. Madeleine&amp;#039;s, the North Miami Beach emporium. &amp;quot;I make a trip there every Art Basel Miami Beach.&amp;quot; (When doing her L.A. rounds, she always checks out Decades and Resurrection.) Another treasured find? A vintage Herm\u00E8s shirt with a Kreayshawn-worthy pattern that she nabbed for $40 at a thrift store in Basalt, Colorado. At the same spot, she scored aquarium-print Versace jeans. &amp;quot;They were about six sizes too big. Luckily, I have an amazing tailor.&amp;quot; (Murat&amp;#039;s in Beverly Hills.) Offsetting all the feminine looks on display is a pair of Nike Dunks emblazoned with fluorescent basketballs and a thought bubble that reads, &amp;quot;Slow down, I&amp;#039;m tired!&amp;quot; Despite this evidence, she insists, &amp;quot;I wouldn&amp;#039;t consider myself a collector of anything other than napkins and eye\u00ADglasses. I don&amp;#039;t have that sort of obsessive mind-set. That said, I&amp;#039;ve always really loved one-of-a-kind pieces, so vintage [clothing] makes a lot of sense for me.&amp;quot; Even Nguyen&amp;#039;s style icons exist outside the norm. Rather than cite Kate Moss, she points to art-world examples: Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, David Hockney&amp;#039;s 1970\u201371 painting of Celia Birtwell; bespectacled gallerist Marian Goodman; and Julian Schnabel: &amp;quot;The man wears his pajamas to formal events! I&amp;#039;m a total homebody, so the thought of donning sleepwear out and about sounds pretty heavenly.&amp;quot; Click here to get an inside look of Viet-Nu Nguyen&amp;#039;s home! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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