During a recent stay in her home city of Los Angeles, New York–based stylist Beverly Nguyen (a Vogue alum and the former studio director for Kate Young) was inspired to dream up her latest venture: a pop-up of homewares called Beverly’s, which opened last weekend in downtown Manhattan. The move home, prolonged by the pandemic, wasn’t intended to last most of 2020, and initially left Nguyen feeling “really displaced, and really out of sync with my work. I didn’t have access to my usual tools, and I just had to reevaluate what my craft looked like if I’m not around those things.” In that time, she reconnected with her parents, Vietnamese immigrants who met as refugees on a boat to America in the 1980s, and who have gone on to run a successful fashion and garments manufacturing business. “I started recognizing how much I loved my parents, how much I had missed them,” says Nguyen, who helped shift their business to produce N95 masks during the first lockdown. “After that project, I needed to pivot. I was thinking about what my parents could do, mixed with me trying to make sense of moving back to New York, which manifested in this shop.”

In the last few weeks of preparing the pop-up, located in a former Chinese temple upstairs from a mah-jongg club on Ludlow Street, Nguyen says the space has quickly become a place of community—least of all, because it’s been lovingly created with the help of some talented friends in New York. Architect Louis Rambert helped build out the space, adorned with floral wallpaper from Andrew Zuckerman (co-founder of The Slowdown) and Nicole Bergen’s Superflower, and a boro-style hanging textile by Megumi Shauna Arai for Tiwa Select. Inside, Fefo Studio created a jumbo clay table that acts as both a cash wrap and centerpiece; illustrator Naomi Otsu created the understated logo. The shop itself is stocked with artful yet utilitarian and affordable items, selected by Nguyen’s expert eye. There are various cookware and utensils from local Chinese restaurant wholesale suppliers on the Bowery, glass stemware, and a custom Beverly’s olive oil produced by a small California farm—alongside, most notably, items made by her own parents: linens, dish towels, and soon, bedding.

Though open for just two months, or possibly longer (this is all a prelude to her childhood dream of opening a Beverly’s on Beverly in L.A., she jokes), Nguyen hopes that the retail space, which has launched just as many New Yorkers are getting vaccinated and reconvening, will also act as a welcoming safe haven. It’s also, she adds, an apt homage to her grandmother, who ran her own hardware shop in Vietnam. “I feel really grateful that I get to bring together all the people I know, have them meet each other, and create things with trust,” Nguyen says. “Whereas sometimes, with styling, it can feel so hesitant, like you’re kind of on your own, this really feels like a community project.”