The Teaching Team
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Nixon Tran
Founder & Principal Instructor
Nixon began working with flowers at fourteen in San Francisco and became a manager by seventeen. After briefly leaving floristry for banking, he returned to flowers through study with Soho Sakai, beginning his Sogetsu practice at twenty-one and becoming a Sogetsu teacher in 2011.
His professional experience has moved through retail floristry, large-scale weddings and events, film production, freelance design, creative consulting, and flower and plant wholesale. These different perspectives now inform a teaching practice centered on intentional design—understanding not only how something is made, but why a decision changes the stability, expression, and feeling of an arrangement.
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Thaonism
Saigon Studio Director | Ikebana Instructor
Thao’s practice begins with curiosity about familiar materials and the possibilities they hold. With a background in marketing and creative communication, she brings an attentive eye to movement, craftsmanship and the space between elements.
As Studio Director, she helps shape the When Still community while continuing her own artistic practice. Her teaching makes room for experimentation, patience and individual expression, encouraging students to learn through both careful observation and the unexpected turns of making.
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Ngoc Rose
Hanoi Lead | Ikebana Instructor
Ngoc Rose brings a background in floral design, wedding decoration and event work to her Sogetsu practice. Since beginning ikebana around 2023, she has explored the expressive qualities of branches, natural textures and asymmetry, paying close attention to the relationship between materials and space.
At When Still, she continues this exploration through teaching. She encourages students to observe each material’s character and approach composition with both intention and openness, finding possibilities in simplicity, imperfection and the unexpected.
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Mia Pham
Diem My Pham
Ikebana InstructorDiem My brings a background in journalism, wedding décor and spatial design to her ikebana practice. Her work explores how materials, movement and empty space shape a composition, with an interest in Vietnamese plants, ceramics and everyday objects.
At When Still, she continues to develop her own practice alongside teaching. Through observation and experimentation, she encourages students to discover their own ways of seeing, offering guidance while leaving room for individual choices and the gradual development of a creative voice.
ABout when still
A practice shaped by flowers, study, and time.
When Still is a Sogetsu ikebana studio and creative community rooted in Vietnam. Its practice moves between technique and experimentation: understanding why a stem holds, why an angle matters, how traditions continue to inform contemporary work, and how small changes in material can alter the feeling of an arrangement.
Around that practice has grown a community of students, teachers, artists, and collaborators brought together by the pleasure of making, observing, and returning to flowers over time.
What began privately during a period of stillness has gradually developed into a continuing practice shared across Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and an increasingly international community.
The beginning
When Still began during the COVID lockdowns in Vietnam, long before there was a studio or a class schedule.
At home with his partner Rosii and their cat, founder Nixon Tran began working with whatever flowers he could find—grocery-store stems, cuttings, and materials gathered nearby. By then, flowers had already been part of his professional life for many years, and much of his relationship with them had become connected to clients, deadlines, and production.
Making at home was different. There was no brief and very little material to work with, which brought his attention back to the simple act of looking, arranging, changing something, and looking again. It reminded him of the pleasure that had first drawn him to flowers.
The name When Still grew from that period and from the idea that slowing down could make room for a different kind of attention—to materials, to creating, and eventually to the way flowers could be studied and shared.
In April 2021, a family illness brought Nixon back to the United States for nine months. Work became a way of keeping himself occupied while being away from Rosii, but it also placed him alongside a wider range of florists, growers, vendors, and designers. By 2022, frequent travel between the United States and Vietnam had become increasingly difficult to reconcile with the life he wanted to build at home.
Teaching gradually emerged as another way forward: an opportunity to stay closer to Vietnam while drawing on years of experience across retail floristry, events, production, wholesale, floral design, and ikebana.
When Still began teaching its first classes in Ho Chi Minh City in February 2023.
Finding a homE
The first classes were held in a small art studio in Phu Nhuan District. Most students arrived with little or no previous knowledge of ikebana, while Nixon was still learning how best to introduce the curriculum and the ideas behind it.
By the end of March 2023, ten students had committed to the full path of study.
Not long afterward, a student who had come to try a class offered When Still another place to teach. The space was smaller but quieter, more comfortable, and surrounded by plants. For the next six months it became the place where the community began to settle into itself, eventually growing to roughly forty students committed to continuing their studies.
As the students progressed, the limitations of the space became increasingly apparent. Classes were repeatedly full, while more advanced lessons demanded greater access to vessels, materials, storage, and working space.
In November 2023, Nixon and Rosii moved When Still into its current HCMC studio, tucked away through the narrow corridors above a restaurant in the center of the city.
For the first time, there was room to store flowers, vessels, tools, and equipment properly, expand the class schedule, accommodate up to fifteen students, and photograph finished arrangements consistently.
By 2024, Nixon was teaching nine to ten classes each week. What had begun as a series of classes was becoming a sustained teaching practice, with students returning week after week and beginning to imagine longer paths through the curriculum, including teaching themselves.
Exhibitions as part of the practice
Exhibitions became part of When Still almost from the beginning.
The first was held in July 2023, as some of the earliest students reached their first freestyle studies. Fourteen arrangements were presented in a photography space and approximately 200 people visited over three days.
The experience established an idea that continues to shape When Still: an exhibition is not simply a display of finished work. It is a marker within a longer practice—a chance for students to see where they are, share that moment with others, and later return to the work with a different understanding.
A January 2024 exhibition brought twenty-one designs into the new studio and welcomed roughly 350 visitors. By July, thirty-four designs were shown to more than 600 people. A smaller teacher-focused exhibition followed in January 2025.
Later, When Still moved beyond the studio for an exhibition at Rue Miche, bringing together more than sixty designers and approximately one hundred works, with more than 3,000 visitors.
The scale continued to develop with ONE | 縁 | Hợp Nhất at Union Square in September 2026. What remained consistent was the purpose: exhibitions offered the community a way to pause, share its work publicly, and recognize progress as part of an ongoing practice.
Growing across Vietnam
As When Still became more established in Ho Chi Minh City, the teaching community began developing beyond a single location.
In June 2025, When Still began teaching in Hanoi under the guidance of Ngoc Rose and Thaonism, eventually developing a community of around forty students committed to the full course path.
At the same time, students in HCMC were progressing further through the curriculum and new teachers were beginning to emerge from within the community.
By the time When Still applied for formal recognition from Sogetsu, more than 250 students were committed to the full path of study.
In November 2025, the Saigon When Still Study Group became the first Sogetsu Study Group in Vietnam, officially recognized by Sogetsu headquarters in Japan.
That recognition gave formal structure to something that had already been developing through classes, exhibitions, certifications, and teacher development, while creating a stronger foundation for the continued growth of Sogetsu practice in Vietnam.
When Still in numbers
2023–September 2026
3,000+ individual students welcomed
20+ countries represented among students
250+ Sogetsu certificates and diplomas earned
300+ returning students in Vietnam
100+ students exhibited over the past two years
10,000+ in-person lessons completed
Beyond Vietnam
When Still’s international relationships have developed through teaching, competitions, collaborations, visiting practitioners, and the increasingly diverse backgrounds of its students.
In August 2024, Nixon participated in the first International Hanaike Competition at Mount Tai in China. International teaching and speaking followed, including an online lecture for Flower Club International in May 2026, floral classes in Guadalajara in July 2026, and teaching as an ikebana instructor for the Soho Study Group in the United States that same month.
Exchange has also taken place within the HCMC studio. When Still has welcomed international educators including Chloe of Aulling Atelier, while Nakama brought together practitioners connected with Beijing, Thailand, Singapore, Hanoi, and When Still in 2026.
Since 2023, students from more than twenty countries have studied with When Still.
For the studio, these relationships are less about geographic expansion than exchange: bringing different ideas and experiences into the practice in Vietnam while allowing the work developing here to participate in a wider conversation.
When Still milestones
February 2023 — First regular ikebana classes begin in HCMC
November 2023 — Move into the current HCMC studio
June 2025 — When Still begins teaching in Hanoi
November 2025 — Saigon When Still Study Group becomes the first Sogetsu Study Group in Vietnam
2026 — Nakama brings together practitioners connected with Beijing, Thailand, Singapore, Hanoi, and When Still
September 2026 — ONE | 縁 | Hợp Nhất opens at Union Square
Where We Are Going
Updated October 2026
When Still continues to grow through its communities in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, while online study is creating another way for students to enter the practice from elsewhere.
The next stage is not simply about reaching more people. It is about developing teachers who can carry the practice forward, supporting stronger communities across Vietnam, and creating structures that allow those communities to remain connected while developing identities of their own.
As the teaching community expands, so does the responsibility to continue learning. When Still is placing greater emphasis on continuing education through the study of ikebana history, research, conversations with other groups, and exchanges with practitioners from different backgrounds. These encounters allow teachers and students to return to familiar ideas with greater depth and to understand their practice within a longer cultural history.
International relationships will remain part of that development, with an emphasis on exchange rather than expansion for its own sake.
As When Still grows, the aim is to preserve what made the earliest classes meaningful: the pleasure of working with flowers, attention to the individual student, and the relationships formed through learning together.
The scale may change. The practice remains personal.
