Experience this story and others in the new issue of Highsnobiety Magazine, available from retailers around the world and our online store.
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…
Read the full article here
