Diego Cortizas, also known affectionately as Diego Chula, passed away yesterday, October 13, 2021, at the age of 49.
Diego is Spanish. He is a fashion designer, living in Vietnam since 2004 and founded Chula House in a prime location on the West Lake (43 Nhat Chieu). During a trip to Vietnam in 2003, Diego fell in love with the place, more specifically Hanoi. Immediately, he made a sudden and fateful decision to live and build a career in this land.
Chula House operates primarily as a fashion store, and occasionally as a cozy meeting place for exhibitions or other art events. The name Chula House actually carries the meaning ofa houseDiego does the design, while his wife Laura takes care of marketing and sales, alongside dedicated and long-term employees.
Chula House's products focus on traditional materials such as silk, velvet, silk, linen, etc. and Diego breathes life into the designs by preserving images, cultural motifs, and daily life of Vietnamese people, while adding and transforming unique color blocks or cut-outs.
To create products for Chula House, Diego has derived everything from his love for Vietnamese indigenous culture. He “tries to see life like a child”, looking at bamboo baskets, bricks... into things that are both new and simple. For Diego, he is always grateful to the extraordinary culture of Vietnam that has taught him and given him many meaningful things.“For us, fashion is just an excuse. Because we are not anthropologists or historians. We are simply strangers who fell in love with this culture and wanted to learn more about it every day, and then share it with each other like children.”- Diego once shared.
Coincidentally, just like the way Diego decided to come to Hanoi, Chula House has many employees who are disabled. He does not consider them disabled, but they are extremely outstanding with other abilities that make up for their physical disabilities. All of Chula House's handmade products are mostly made by their hands. Diego creates jobs for them, as well as breaks the prejudice about jobs for disabled people; they can absolutely make products of high quality, even better than normal people.
Diego has endless inspiration for the Vietnamese ao dai. He passionately studies how to sew the traditional Vietnamese ao dai and its history. For Diego, the mission of a fashion designer is to ensure that this traditional costume heritage continues through the flow of time. Not only that, he has many ideas for the ao dai, such as combining Vietnamese identity with Spanish culture, and has sold many ao dai to the Spanish market.
Diego also participates in fashion shows, but not only shows with flashy lights, but also fashion shows in the mountains and forests or in community spaces. In 2020, Diego participated in the Brocade fashion show within the framework of the 2nd Vietnam Brocade Culture Festival held in the mountains and forests of Dak Nong, with the catwalk made of bumpy wooden panels and the main material used was brocade fabric.
In April 2021, Diego organized a fashion show on the small street of Phuc Tan, part of a public space project for riverside workers. He had high hopes for the show to honor the diversity of Vietnamese culture, as well as because the location was "truly the heart of Hanoi". Most of the models in the show were residents here. The main inspiration for the collection was Long Bien Bridge and neighboring residential areas. In this project, Diego and local people participated in painting a mural of the "Long Bien dragon" tens of meters long, with outstanding colors and especially the image of a chicken coop at Long Bien night market, which Diego created into unique lampshades.
Diego is not only an artist on the fashion design stage, but also a real artist on the music stage. He often participates in music performances at Chula House, or Tadioto - a bar, a "cultural transit station", an experimental art space that has existed for more than 13 years in Hanoi. And, he also writes poetry.
Book me a ride
Book me a ride
And I will bring you
To your smiling side
And I will dance you
Drinking a Lemon Tea
And I will bring you
To an endless night
Let's cross together
the Red River
Let's have an ice cream at winter
Let's have two bun chas
on the sidewalk.
Let's dance bolero
With the raincoats.
Just Book Me a Ride
And I'll go.
The rivers of taxis,
The Misty of Claxons,
The smoke of the trucks
Are getting me late,
The Red lights and cars
The lies and my demons,
But I find a shortcut,
I am almost there
Book me a ride
and I will bring you
to the sunny side,
Book me a ride
and I will bring you
to the smiling side.
- Diego Chula (Hanoi 2021)
We will remember Diego for the joy he brought to Hanoi and to Vietnamese culture.
