The 33-year-old, whose name is pronounced 'ah lan', is trying to explain how she has managed to run a successful home furnishings business in Vietnam despite no formal training in art or design.
The creative and entrepreneurial brains behind Mosaique, which has three shops in Hanoi and one in Ho Chi Minh City, says: 'I'm really bad at drawing but I have all these images and colours in my head. I tell them to my designing team and it makes all my dreams come true.'
Looking around her, she adds: 'I feel I've done it before, probably in my past life.'
We are seated in a private corner in The Mosaique Living Room, which is also her baby. It is a hip members-only supper club which has been converted from an old two-storey colonial bungalow in downtown Hanoi.
The furnishings in the club are all from her stores: ottomans in plush maroon velvet, cushion covers made from vermillion brocade and lotus lampshades draped in silk of every conceivable hue.
She lets on proudly that Mosaique's products are exported to 36 countries and sold in chic stores such as Neiman Marcus in the United States and Shanghai Tang in Hong Kong. In Singapore, they are sold at Lim's Arts & Living in Holland Village.
Diminutive Duong looks like a glamour puss in her knee-high boots and black designer togs. Smart, charismatic and self-assured, it's not hard to imagine that the world's an oyster for the entrepreneur.
Two decades earlier, however, her life was a different story.
Eager to escape life under the communists who took over the country in 1975, she and her father - like hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese boat people - risked death on board a precarious fishing vessel and set sail from Hanoi for Hong Kong in 1988.
Alas, their hopes of gaining political asylum in a foreign country were not realised. Instead, they spent five years living behind barbed wire fences in a Hong Kong refugee camp before returning to Vietnam in 1993.
Duong remembers a childhood which was privileged. Both her parents came from wealthy land-owning backgrounds. As her mother ran a very lucrative abattoir, her father could afford to work for free as a boxing coach.
He groomed and trained several champion Vietnamese boxers including her two older brothers Tu Anh, 39, and Ali (named after Muhammad Ali), 37.
While war and political turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s left many of her countrymen hungry, Duong says they were always well-fed.
'In those days, pork was as precious as gold and because my mother ran an abattoir, we always had meat in the house.'
She recalls people waiting by the drain outside their home to pick up skin, offal or whatever they threw out.
Although well-off, her father was keen to leave the country because the family was marked out as capitalists and had their home confiscated in 1983.
When she was 14, he told her he'd take her on a holiday to Haiphong. She did not know she'd end up with about 70 other people in a boat meant for 20 and embark on a clandestine voyage to Hong Kong.
Her father's plan was to get them out of the country first and get resettled in the West before sending for the rest of his family.
The perilous journey on the choppy seas took 17 days. She's still quite distressed thinking about it.
'We tied ourselves together so that we wouldn't get thrown over. Sometimes the waves were so strong that we'd vomit until we could taste bile.'
In Hong Kong, they were confined with thousands of other refugees in Whitehead detention centre.
She grew up very fast.
'You're put in a situation where you don't know what will happen. When people are thrown into a situation like that, they get very transparent and you learn everything - good and bad - there is to learn about people. There are lots of characters - some mean, rough and nasty - and you have to know how to take care of yourself and survive.'
At the refugee camp, she finished her Level 12 (the equivalent of the O levels) and worked as an interpreter for an Australian female volunteer.
She says: 'It was my boss who indirectly told me to go home. She visited Hanoi on a trip and showed me pictures she had taken of my mother and family. She told me our chance of getting resettled was slim.'
In 1993, she and her father found themselves on a plane to be repatriated to Hanoi.
'When I was on the plane, I realised that my life was starting again. And when I saw my mother and all my loved ones, I knew I was home, where I should be.'
Duong realised a childhood dream when she returned to Vietnam: becoming a singer.
A trumpet player whom she had met in Whitehead and who had returned to Haiphong invited her to sing with his travelling band. She soon found herself travelling from city to city, sometimes singing to crowds of 3,000.
'I did it for a few months. My mother didn't want me to have that sort of life. I didn't mind giving it up. It was something I dreamed of doing, I did it and I had to move on.'
She worked briefly at other jobs including a stint as a salesgirl and a company administrator before setting up her own property agency in 1993. With her fluency in English, she specialised in helping foreigners buy or rent accommodation in Vietnam.
'I started out with no knowledge of anything and became the best property agent in Hanoi.'
It helps, she says, that she's a good negotiator.
'My belief in myself and what I do is so strong that when I talk, people trust me.'
Although she could earn US$15,000 a month as a property agent, she soon got bored of the work.
By then, she had already developed a keen sense of design aesthetics and cultivated a wide network of skilled Vietnamese artisans from helping her foreign clients deal with their furnishing needs.
In 1998, she decided to open her first Mosaique store. It was a big hit with both affluent local and foreign clients. Three other stores followed.
She opened The Mosaique Living Room in 2004. The private club has become the favoured venue for fashion shows as well as private parties and is a magnet for Hanoi's fashionable and glamorous set.
'It's also a good showcase for my designs and the Mosaique brand,' says Duong, who is planning Mosaique franchise stores in Prague and London.
She gets involved in every level of her business.
'I don't want to miss out on anything. I especially love getting dizzy and high on ideas when I brainstorm. I need that to feel alive,' she says.
Meanwhile, she has been dating an American businessman based in Manila for several years.
'He doesn't want me to be a businesswoman. He wants me to be a housewife,' she says, laughing.
Surprisingly, she has no qualms about doing so. 'I don't want to be a victim of my own success,' she says.
In a reflective tone, she continues: 'From when I was 19 until now, all that I have achieved has been for myself. Maybe I should think about devoting myself now to a family.'
Isn't giving up a lucrative business a waste?
She smiles. 'Just look at my family. We had so much, we also lost so much, and now we are back.'
She continues: 'I think I've learnt that things can be given and things can be taken away. When you have it, you have to appreciate it. When you have to give it up, you have to know how to let it go.'
