French stylist Henri Hubert believes in the nascent Vietnamese fashion industry.

French fashionista Henri Hubert has helped local models launch international careers, but he refuses to take any credit.

“The most important thing is their confidence,” says Hubert, a former model who came to Vietnam six and a half years ago to help a friend set up a fashion company.

The friend gave up two months later after judging that the local fashion industry wasn’t promising.

Hubert, who has worked and consulted in many countries including South Africa and the US, stayed in Vietnam.

The French stylist and visual artist is fond of talking about his love for Vietnam. In the beginning, he intended to stay for only a few months.

“But I lingered on one time after another, met one person after another, liked and wanted to do one thing after another, and now it’s many months since and I’m still in Vietnam,” Hubert says.

Model and actress Truong Ngoc Anh was the first Vietnamese model to hire him as a consultant.

Hubert, who now runs the creative and visual services company Creative Group, has consulted and introduced many talented Vietnamese models to agencies abroad.

His clients Bao Hoa, who has won a three-year contract with a modeling agency in New York, and B.B Pham, who has appeared on Fashion TV, have both consulted extensively with Hubert.

Though the Vietnamese fashion industry has yet to churn out supermodels by the dozen, Hubert says he has seen much to be optimistic about.

Hubert says Bao Hoa exemplifies what all local models ultimately need to succeed: ambition.

She’s short, but she knows what she wants.

“Hoa said she would go to the US to learn everything she needs and use her experience to help other models in her country when she comes back,” Hubert says of the model who opened Creative Group with him three years ago.

Hubert says ambitious Vietnamese models like Hoa need a little more help from local modeling agencies to compete abroad.

But unfortunately, modeling agencies here aren’t very professional yet, he says.

“Most of them don’t consider fashion a business, but a passion or something fun.”

Local modeling agencies don’t provide their models with much professional training and don’t work very hard to promote them, he says.

Foreign agencies, on the other hand, know how to make their models famous.

As for the local fashion industry, Hubert says despite its shortcomings – such as a lack of quality supporting industries like textiles – it has potential.

Fashion magazines, for instance, are popular here, showing great public interest in fashion culture, he says.

And this is ideal for the development of the fashion industry, he says.

Hubert says he would use the colors blue and green to capture the spirit of the Vietnamese fashion industry.

“Blue is hope and green is fresh, always fresh.”

Reported by Phuong Anh