Peter Do with the muslin toiles of his spring-summer 2022 designs. Photo: Ike Edeani On a recent Thursday afternoon in Sunset Park, which is to fashion as, say, Seventh Avenue is to animal husbandry, the next great American designer is fitting a model with a funereal topcoat. Black, sharply tailored, falling nearly to the calf, it’s a lot of coat for July. “It’s light enough for summer,” says Peter Do, laughing, who himself is wearing an oversize white cotton shirt and black Adidas gym shorts.
When Peter Do debuted in 2018, the industry was still somewhat staggered by the departure of Celine’s Phoebe Philo, arguably the most influential designer of her generation. Labels were in a fugue state of streetwear obsession, neglecting older consumers and anyone looking for something besides megaprints and status sneakers. Do had worked for Philo, and with his dignified sensibilities, he found a niche as one of her heirs.
Do attended Pratt after high school but found it too slow and conceptual, so he transferred to F.I.T. to get to the worktable faster. “Fashion designer” wasn’t necessarily the immigrant parent’s dream for a child; Do’s mother, Hong Nguyen, would “rather me be a doctor, an architect, a pharmacist — anything else but this,” he says. He remembers her saying, “I worry about you. Are you going to make Halloween costumes when you graduate? Are you going to be a seamstress?’ ” But at F.I.T.
Do signed on with Derek Lam in New York, where he worked on an eight-person team designing the collections and was sent to Italy to liaise with the atelier. But he wouldn’t stay for long — and Lam doesn’t begrudge him for it. “It’s the talent and passion and ambition that come together in Peter,” Lam says. “I don’t mean ambition in a negative, pejorative sort of way. When I remember working with Peter, I could definitely see this guy is exceptional.
But Do already had a small following online from the moody, black-and-white Tumblr he had been keeping since his F.I.T. days, a following that migrated to Instagram. And when the team began putting the collection on Instagram, retailers started showing up. One was von der Goltz, then the global buying director at Net-a-Porter. “It was instant,” she says of her reaction to Peter Do’s first season, and she battled Barneys to secure an exclusive on it — and won.
Demand seems to be both present and growing. Three years in, the Do family is in the black, with $6 million in sales and 42 stockists worldwide, and it is attracting interest from both outside investors and larger labels hoping to swallow up a next big thing. So far, say Do and Ho, they’re not interested.