Foreigners shop for local fashion brands in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) across two clusters. District 1 is home to LSOUL, GIA Studios, The New Playground and DirtyCoins; Thảo Điền is home to Fancì Club and Maison Marou. The best saigon local fashion brands gather in these two neighbourhoods, the designer strip of District 1 and the riverside boutiques of Thảo Điền, and the smartest haul ends a few steps from both, at NOTE – The Scent Lab, a perfume workshop in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with two studios (42 Nguyễn Huệ, 2nd floor of the Cafe Apartment, District 1; and 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu, Thảo Điền), rated ★4.9 by 500+ travellers.

Written by the NOTE – The Scent Lab team, who host travellers at the 42 Nguyễn Huệ and 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu studios. Updated June 2026.

You came for the áo dài silhouettes you saw on a K-pop stage and the rosette corsets a model wore in Paris. What you leave with says more about your trip than any of it, but only if you know which doors to push. This is the map: the real labels, the streets they live on, and the one keepsake nobody can knock off.

How to shop Saigon local fashion brands (and avoid the fakes)

Here is the tension every visitor feels in Ho Chi Minh City. The street markets are loud, cheap and fun, and stacked with counterfeit logos that won’t survive a wash. Meanwhile the genuinely good saigon local fashion brands are designed and made here, with their own showrooms, their own labels, and a growing wall of international press. The trick is knowing the difference.

The simplest rule: if a piece carries a famous foreign designer logo at a market-stall price, it’s a copy. Vietnam’s homegrown designers don’t trade on someone else’s monogram. They have names of their own. Buy the brand, not the logo.

The second rule is geography. Curated local labels keep proper storefronts, and they cluster. Spend a morning in District 1 and an afternoon in Thảo Điền and you’ll have covered the city’s two best fashion corridors without ever touching a fake. Below is exactly where they sit, and what each one is known for.

One more piece of insider advice, from people who work inside the Cafe Apartment every day: pace it. The temptation is to sprint through six shops in three hours, arms full, feet aching, the whole haul a blur by dinner. The travellers who enjoy it most do the opposite: two or three labels, a coffee in between, and one slow stop to make something by hand. We’re biased, of course; our studio is on the 2nd floor of that same building. But we watch the rhythm of a good shopping day all the time, and the best ones breathe.

District 1: the local-brand cluster

District 1 is the heart of the city, and the heart of its fashion scene. Four labels here cover the full spread: going-out dresses, quiet tailoring, underground streetwear, and a heritage-coded brand with a near-cult following. They sit within a short ride of one another, so you can hit several in an afternoon.

What makes these four worth the detour isn’t just that they’re local. It’s that the international fashion world has already noticed. K-pop stylists pull from them. Global stockists carry them. Press in Hong Kong, Singapore and beyond writes them up. You’re not buying a tourist trinket here; you’re buying the same labels a stylist in Seoul might be chasing, at the source, before they hit a resale markup abroad. That’s the quiet thrill of shopping local in Saigon.

LSOUL: the K-pop-stage womenswear label

LSOUL makes the structured, body-hugging party dresses you’ve probably already scrolled past. Its pieces have reportedly been worn by K-pop stars, including BLACKPINK’s Jennie, and the brand says one skirt sold out in the region of 2,000 units in roughly fifteen minutes after she posted it. Whether or not the number is exact, the appeal isn’t: this is Korean-stage glamour designed in Saigon. Find it at 257B Nguyễn Trãi, District 1, on Instagram @lsoul.officiel (around 348K followers), or at lsoul.com.

GIA Studios: quiet tailoring, global stockists

If LSOUL is the stage, GIA Studios is the after-party in a candle-lit room. Clean lines, neutral palettes, and a designer who reinterprets the áo dài into something you’d wear in Milan as easily as in Saigon. It’s stocked internationally on SSENSE, Farfetch and Lane Crawford, the kind of credibility that tells a foreign shopper this is the real thing. The flagship is at 125 Hai Bà Trưng, District 1; Instagram @gia_studios (around 104K followers).

The New Playground: the underground concept mall

The New Playground isn’t one brand; it’s a basement full of them. A neon-lit underground concept mall packed with emerging Vietnamese streetwear, vintage rails and accessory stalls, it’s where you go to find pieces nobody back home will have. Bring cash for the smaller stalls. You’ll find it at 26 Lý Tự Trọng, District 1, with a second location in Vincom Đồng Khởi; Instagram @thenewplayground (around 129K followers).

DirtyCoins: homegrown streetwear with imperial motifs

For something that reads unmistakably Vietnamese, DirtyCoins is the pick. The homegrown streetwear label threads dragons and imperial motifs through modern hoodies and tees, a recognisably local-coded souvenir you can actually wear. It’s reached around a million Instagram followers (@dirtycoins.vn), with stores in Vincom Đồng Khởi and at 561 Sư Vạn Hạnh, District 10.

When the bags are full and your feet have had enough of District 1, there’s one more door worth pushing, and it’s right in the middle of it all. NOTE – The Scent Lab sits on the 2nd floor of the Cafe Apartment at 42 Nguyễn Huệ, the same restored block of indie cafes and shops you’ve been wandering. It’s not another rail of clothes. It’s where you make a fragrance that belongs only to you (more on that below).

Book Your Perfume Workshop →

Thảo Điền: riverside boutiques

Cross the river to Thảo Điền and the pace changes. The streets go leafy, the cafes go slow, and the shopping turns from designer strip to riverside boutique. Two stops here are worth the trip: one of the most-hyped fashion labels Vietnam has produced, and the chocolate maker travellers fly home with.

Fancì Club: the viral Y2K label

Fancì Club is the one your feed already knows. The Y2K corsets and sheer, rosette-strewn dresses have reportedly been worn by Bella Hadid, Hailey Bieber and BLACKPINK, turning a Saigon label into a red-carpet name. Pieces are made in small runs, which is half the appeal: you’re buying something genuinely scarce, not mass-produced. The store is at 186 Nguyễn Văn Hương, Thảo Điền; Instagram @fanci.club (around 477K followers), or fanciclub.com.

Maison Marou: bean-to-bar Saigon chocolate

Not everything you haul has to be worn. Maison Marou is Vietnam’s pioneering bean-to-bar craft chocolatier: single-origin bars by Vietnamese cacao region, in packaging built for gifting, and praised everywhere from local guides to the New York Times. It’s the edible souvenir that survives the flight home and the one your friends will actually remember. Find the Thảo Điền maison at 90 Xuân Thủy, Thảo Điền.

And in Thảo Điền too, there’s a NOTE – The Scent Lab studio waiting, this one at 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu, a short stroll from the riverside shops. After a morning of corsets and chocolate, it’s the place to slow down and make something that’s entirely your own.

Book Your Perfume Workshop →

The take-home: a scent no one can fake

Here’s the thing about a haul of saigon local fashion brands: it’s wonderful, and it’s also reproducible. Someone can buy the same corset, the same hoodie, the same bar of chocolate. There is exactly one souvenir in this city that cannot be copied, counterfeited or bought twice, because you make it yourself.

At NOTE – The Scent Lab, a workshop instructor walks you through a 90-minute session blending your own fragrance from more than 30 IFRA-certified ingredients, including Vietnamese ones: lotus, agarwood, cinnamon. You leave with a bottle of perfume in one of four sizes (10, 20, 30 or 50ml) and a handwritten formula card, so you can re-order the exact scent from anywhere in the world. Children aged 8 and up are welcome with a parent.

There’s a reason scent works this way and a corset doesn’t. Smell is the only sense wired straight to memory. One whiff of cinnamon or lotus, months from now, and you’re back on Nguyễn Huệ with shopping bags at your feet and the warm Saigon afternoon pressing in. A dress hangs in your wardrobe. A fragrance lives in your head. That’s why a custom scent outlasts every other thing you’ll carry home.

What you’re really making isn’t perfume. It’s a memory you can wear. As one traveller, An L, put it after their session: “Ember and Maria did an amazing job explaining the perfume wheel and how all the scents go together. This perfume will always remind us of this trip in Vietnam.”

Another guest, herbaljo, said it more plainly: “I loved my fragrance making experience. I have a beautiful souvenir to take home and every time I smell it, I will remember Saigon.” That’s the difference between a thing you bought and a thing you made. And if you’d rather browse ready-made fragrances to bring home alongside your own, NOTE’s online shop is at thescentnote.biz.

Most travellers say the same thing afterwards: that they wish they’d booked it earlier in the trip, so they could have worn their scent through the rest of it. The studio is open daily. If a quiet, hands-on hour between the shopping sounds like your kind of afternoon, you can hold a spot below.

Book Your Perfume Workshop →

Planning the rest of the day around it is easy. We put together a full guide to the Cafe Apartment that maps the building floor by floor, and a what-to-buy souvenir guide if you want more keepsake ideas beyond clothes. First time in the city? Our first-timer’s attractions map for 2026 sets the whole trip up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do foreigners shop for Vietnamese fashion brands in Saigon?

The best saigon local fashion brands cluster in two neighbourhoods. District 1 holds the designer strip: LSOUL, GIA Studios, the underground concept mall The New Playground, and streetwear label DirtyCoins. Across the river, Thảo Điền adds riverside boutiques like Fancì Club. Spend a morning in one and an afternoon in the other and you’ll cover the city’s best fashion without touching a market stall.

Are Saigon market clothes fake?

Many street-market pieces carrying famous foreign designer logos are counterfeit, and they rarely survive a wash. The genuinely good local labels are a different thing entirely: they’re designed and made in Vietnam, sold from their own storefronts under their own names. The rule of thumb: buy the Vietnamese brand, not the foreign logo.

What’s a unique Saigon souvenir beyond clothes?

A custom perfume you blend yourself at NOTE – The Scent Lab. Over 90 minutes you create a fragrance from more than 30 IFRA-certified ingredients (including Vietnamese lotus, agarwood and cinnamon) and leave with a bottle plus a handwritten formula card you can re-order from anywhere. Unlike a corset or a bar of chocolate, no one else can own the same one.

Where is NOTE – The Scent Lab?

NOTE – The Scent Lab has two Ho Chi Minh City studios. One is at 42 Nguyễn Huệ, on the 2nd floor of the Cafe Apartment in District 1, in the thick of the shopping. The other is at 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu in Thảo Điền, near the riverside boutiques. Both are rated ★4.9 by 500+ travellers.

How long is the perfume workshop?

About 90 minutes, instructor-guided from start to finish. As Peter H wrote after his session: “Cam our host was so awesome. I learnt so much about perfumery and more importantly had so much fun.” You leave with a finished bottle and a formula card. No experience needed, and children aged 8 and up are welcome with a parent.

Information in this article was accurate at the time of writing. Opening hours, prices, and availability may change, so we recommend double-checking with official sources before your visit.