THE WORD OF PETER
Only two collections in and already winning over top buyers, Céline alumnus Peter Do is proving to be one of fashion’s most exciting young luminaries. By Alice Birrell.
Céline alumnus Peter Do is one of fashion’s most exciting young luminaries.
When New York-based designer Peter Do discovered fashion, the scene didn’t open on him as a child locked away in a suburban bedroom, sketching furiously, dreaming of days whiled away in light-filled ateliers. It was much later and involved reams of wax paper and garbage bags, in a Project Runway- style competition at his own high school in Philadelphia, as he likes to tell it.
“There was no anything, no internet, so we thought it would be fun to do a little fashion show,” he says over the phone from his design studio in Brooklyn. “I learned how to sew, I was learning how to thread a bobbin, I was dyeing a curtain pink,” he recounts of the art club project that had him whipping up confections out of bin liners and sewing hems into toilet paper. It is clear that the 28-year-old Do, who grew up removed from fashion on a farm in Vietnam before moving to the US aged 14, isn’t habituated to embellish – on either his intelligently executed clothing or his stories. As he puts it: “I found out then that I really enjoyed making clothes.”
Two seasons in, Do has checked off an enviable stable of achievements with his eponymous label. After studying at the Pratt Institute, then the Fashion Institute of Technology, where he won top honours in the CFDA Scholarship Program, he finished in 2014 winning the Graduates Award in the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers. That led to an opening at Céline, and after two years in Paris under Phoebe Philo he returned to New York to work at Derek Lam before going solo. He held appointments for his debut spring/ summer ’19 season in a friend’s apartment and walked away with Net-A-Porter and Dover Street Market among a total of nine stockists, who between them bought every piece.
It’s possible Do may tire of discussing his stint at Céline as attention continues to ramp up. Let’s get this out of the way then: he doesn’t view his label as a stand-in for any space left by Philo’s tenure end. “Phoebe had a huge influence in the industry and now that it’s gone there is this huge void that we all talk about. But I do think we don’t want to be the ones to fill that void,” Do outlays. He is sanguine about Philo’s influence on him, which reads more as a synergy in design approach than as impressionable apprentice, heavily marked by his fashion-giant teacher.
“It does help, I know. There’s some kind of credibility that I have because I’ve worked with Phoebe,” he says. Business partner Vincent Ho agrees. “I guess you can see Phoebe’s influence in us. I think you can see Phoebe’s influence in Daniel [Lee]’s collection at Bottega, you know? But at the end of the day, we’re all trying to carve our own path, so there’s that.”
Philo-philes will pick up hints, whatever Do’s aim, and will likely become fans, too: restrained colour palettes with bold seasonal incursions, a light hand with prints, geometric hardware, all with a fresh rework. Take the less demure flashes of skin, like a plissé pleat satin-crepe skirt with a step hem that spans ankle to top of the thigh, and the flou he learned at Céline – tailoring was his focus at design school – though he has made it his own in the way trousers pool at the feet, the use of a sheer spongy “spacer” fabric on sheer pants that paradoxically, for all they unveil, read sensible. Tailored pieces incorporate gestural lines, and many are convertible: remove the sleeves and a blazer becomes a vest. Two-in-one.
So when he then says he doesn’t want to increase product for product’s sake, it’s credible. “If it’s been done before, what’s the point? I don’t think we need any more clothes,” he says. Do re-uses mill offcuts as fabric and repurposed metals for his jewellery. It is also a measure by which he edits collections. “If you can’t wear it, I’m not interested. If it’s uncomfortable but looks good, I cancel it or I improve it,” he explains, saying itchy and sweaty fabrics are out.
Do knows his is a fledgling brand, but it doesn’t dampen his ambitions. Doubling stockists in one season, his team is aiming for a runway show and slowly adding categories: shoes and jewellery are being bolstered along with knits and expanded accessories. They cite houses such as Dries Van Noten and Margiela as their benchmark, while pointedly observing the age of the big American fashion house has flamed out (“We’ve had Proenza and Alexander Wang, and Marc Jacobs – a huge success –but it’s been 10, 20, 30 years …”).
Big ambitions sure, but as a small team vainglorious pursuit of wealth and fame has no place in their circle. The way Do sees it, hard work can be shared, discussed and approached from different creative and design angles. “[At Céline] we built such strong collections together from different points of views and perspectives, so I know you can’t do this alone in this industry,” he reflects. A very Philo philosophy, but as it turns out, a universal one.