Peter Do Is New York Fashion’s Greatest Hope
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Last year I visited the studio of Peter Do, the Vietnam-born American designer, at Industry City, an enormous creative-manufacturing complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Though quite gentrified, the multiple-block center still carries that old Brooklyn industrial feel. The streets are lined in cobblestone and intersected by the still-visible tracks of a long-abandoned railway that used to snake around South Brooklyn, moving goods between docked cargo ships, factories, and warehouses to be shipped on to the rest of America. This location, far away from the schmoozing power spheres of New York fashion, fits him well. Though active on Instagram, where he can speak directly to his audience, Do has a tenuous relationship with the fashion system itself. He never shows his face, hardly gives interviews, and otherwise avoids the limelight.
His top floor space is airy, with big windows wrapping around two of the four walls, some overlooking the New York Harbor. It is part design studio, part showroom. Do’s team of six does everything but the manufacturing and samples here. When I visited, the studio was abuzz with activity; fittings for the upcoming Spring/Summer 2023 show were set to a dark wave playlist piped through the speakers as Brenda Weischer (known by her influencer name, Brenda Hashtag), the fashion editor at the Berlin magazine 032c, and the actor-model-editor Blake Abbie — who were both to walk the show — milled about.
Do was clearly concentrating, but if he was stressed, he did not show it. Instead, he somehow found time for everyone; jumping between his duties of designer and creative director to adjust the clothes on models that were being shot for the lookbook, directing their walks, and all while showing me the new collection, revealed this spring. The collection is supported by Woolmark, an organization charged with promoting merino wool, and for this project Do designed 22 pieces, including some made from the same Loro Piana wool yarn. With the help of Ellie Grace Cumming, the fashion director of Another Magazine, he turned these 22 pieces into 351 outfits — one for nearly every day of the year. “I stumbled across Peter’s work on Vogue Runway and was incredibly impressed by how finessed it looked,” says Cumming. “It was minimal but cool and young. It was really exciting and rare to see a young brand look so accomplished.”
While I was trying to understand the statistical permutations required to turn so few pieces into so many outfits, Do pointed out that versatility is one of his key concepts. Some pieces were modular, with removable necks and sleeves. Others were constructed so that they could be styled in multiple ways.
The word “modern” has been turned by fashion into a cliché, but there is indeed a sense of modernity in Do’s expertly cut clothes. He often uses materials — leather and suiting-grade wool — that give structure to his garments and make them feel simultaneously sleek and nonchalant, and he leans heavily into tailoring at a moment when it feels like fashion has abandoned it. Do favors an elongated silhouette, voluminous yet sharp. His favorite jacket is an enormously sized double-breasted blazer with a white basting stitch and a dropped shoulder that Do wraps himself into, as if it were his favorite cozy cardigan. (Rihanna owns one, too.) The closest thing to a logo that can be found on Do’s clothes is a contrasting thin line that extends from the neck down the left sleeve, mimicking his tattoo. He keeps his color palette to a minimum of white, black, and navy, letting fabric, construction, and contour do most of the talking.
Peter Do blew up before the pandemic, and the evident mastery of his craft, which was honed as an assistant designer under Phoebe Philo at Celine, has earned him much praise. His focus on design, which is built into the clothes rather than superimposed onto them, is a breath of fresh air, especially in New York, where sportswear has reigned for decades and the current preoccupation is ironic sloganeering and logos tacked onto shoddily made clothes designed for Instagram. Do’s garments, on the contrary, have a level of sophistication that is normally associated with an established Parisian house.
When Philo left Celine in 2017, there was a sense of alarm over where the type of woman that loved Celine would shop. It was natural for some of them to gravitate to Do’s work, even though Do is careful to point out that despite the tremendous respect for Philo’s oeuvre at Celine, his brand has its own ethos. “It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of my team,” he says. “I was a very small part of Celine, and I learned so much there, but the rest of my team also has creative input at PD.”
I met Do for our final interview at the headquarters of Helmut Lang in New York’s Meatpacking District. Do was recently appointed as the brand’s creative director — a nod of confidence in Do’s skills that has a special meaning for him. Lang’s name still carries unparalleled mythos among fashion fanatics with an intellectual bent, and Do counts himself as one of them. He has dug with gusto into his mandate to bring the brand back to its former glory, even if designing two lines undoubtedly puts additional stress on him.
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Do was born in Biên Hòa, Vietnam, in 1990. At the age of 14 he immigrated to the US, reuniting with his parents in Philadelphia. At his local high school he became the president of its arts club. That’s when he started making clothes on a $20 sewing machine his mother bought him at Kmart. Clothes were important to Do only if by virtue of owning so few of them growing up in Vietnam — a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, a couple of shirts, and his school uniform. At the club, Do made garments out of whatever materials he could find. At first he didn’t know how closures worked; he remembers having to cut models out of his clothes after the show until his mother showed him how to properly set a zipper. By the end of his junior school year, the students put on fashion shows and the excitement that came along with them set his trajectory. Though Do already knew he wanted to be a clothing designer, out of practical consideration so familiar to many immigrants, he enrolled in an architecture program at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, but switched to fashion design just before the classes started. In 2010, a year into his studies, he transferred to the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. His time there coincided with the nascent age of social media, and Do began to post his design process on Tumblr, which soon garnered him an audience. In 2014, during his senior year, he was one of the three winners of the first LVMH Graduates Prize. The award came with an assistant designer position at one of LVMH’s fashion brands, and without hesitation Do picked Celine, where Philo was already making waves.
Arriving in Paris and at Celine’s design studio straight out of school was daunting. Most people there spoke French, and Do had trouble making friends. His lifelines were the Vietnamese seamstresses who made the clothes and translated for him. Do threw himself into the work, soaking up clothes-making skills. Being exposed to such a high level of craft was an invaluable education that set Do on his course.
But after three years at Celine, Do was tired, lonely, and restless. The road ahead was more years in the studio and the hope of eventually rising to the top, perhaps getting a creative director post a decade down the line. It all seemed too slow. Do quit and went back to New York at the end of 2016, where he worked on various projects, including a Zaha Hadid exhibit. “I wanted to see if I would miss making clothes,” he says. He did. The following year he got a job designing for Derek Lam. On weekends he worked on the Peter Do company: scouring vintage markets for clothes to take apart, constructing the first samples, and writing a business plan with the help of a few friends.
Finally, in 2018, his first collection was ready. Do and a couple of his team members rented an Airbnb in Paris, packed the samples into suitcases, and with only one confirmed appointment from Barneys, opened for business. No one except Barneys came. Frustrated with the si lence from buyers and the press, Do began posting the new collection on the brand’s Instagram, where he already had a cult following from his early days of sharing his work processes on Tumblr. And his audience responded, sharing the collection online. Before long Dover Street Market Ginza came knocking, and then others.
Soon, Do, whose designs cut across New York’s reputation for bland sportswear, was hailed as New York’s answer to the great European houses. “New Designer Peter Do Sets Own Path in Saturated Fashion Market,” declared a Women’s Wear Daily headline from 2018.
The tailoring-heavy collections that have come since ooze sophistication not seen in New York since the days of Donna Karan. They possess the kind of edge that sets them apart from traditional luxury brands, especially when buttressed by Do’s chunky, aggressive footwear. “The buyers were surprised that someone my age was making these very sophisticated clothes,” Do says. “We just weren’t into sportswear, we were running away from things like athleisure. But we didn’t realize we were going against the grain, we were really naïve.”
Attention and collaborations followed. Humberto Leon, the co-founder of the cult retail New York destination Opening Ceremony, tapped Do to create a one-off varsity jacket capsule for FarFetch. “Peter’s work right from the beginning showed strength and conviction. I was immediately drawn in,” says Leon. “As his brand grew, I got to know him. I loved him even more because his story is so beautiful and genuine.”
And then came the Helmut Lang appointment.
But universal critical acclaim also gave Do pause. His business wasn’t yet ready for the exponential growth it demanded, nor was the designer himself. The attention did not sit well with Do. Like Martin Margiela, Do began to hide his face in photos. Earlier this year he took a long break from social media.
There were also the realities of running a business whose logistics were not catching up with the image of a hot young brand. Fashion is good at creating the myth of overnight success, but the everyday reality is often the opposite. Critical success does not guarantee a commercial one, and a brand that gets ahead of itself can easily get burned. Do is very cognizant of that. He is not gunning for worldwide domination but rather longevity, quality, and craft. When I ask him what his dream scenario is, his answer is modest. “My dream is to build an atelier in New York, like the one at CELINE, with the highest level of craft, where people can come and learn about garment-making, where people are proud to go to work.”
Last year Do was inducted into the BoF 500, a highly coveted list of who’s who in fashion, drawn up by The Business of Fashion, the industry’s newspaper of record. During the induction gala at the posh Shangri-La Hotel in Paris, I spotted Do hiding in a corner with the model Maggie Maurer. As the other celebrants and guests enjoyed the festivities, vamping or striking poses for photos in an adjacent room, Do and I spent the evening talking. Before the night was out, Do wanted to leave. He was tired from jet lag and the hubbub. “I just want to go home,” he said.
