Given how relaxed Peter Do looked only minutes before his spring show in Paris, you’d never imagine he designs 10 collections a year — two for for his own label and eight across men’s and women’s lines at Helmut Lang.
But it’s a rhythm that has pushed the New York-based designer to whittle down his already-minimalist work to its essentials.
“Now it feels [that], for my own brand, I want to feel more personal and more quiet,” he said backstage.
It didn’t get more personal than putting his own tattoo, a line running down the side, as the main feature on the new all-black seasonless, gender-irrelevant range of basic-to-him options dubbed “168,” after the number of hours in a week.
Throughout, Do’s designs were meant to work overtime, as he explored deconstructed summer tailoring. Cue pieces like layered T-shirts with trailing cords that could be used to fasten them in several ways, or a high-neck top revealed itself to be a shirt back to front.
Of course, it’s not quite as straightforward as taking any old shirt to do this. Subtle on shorter shirts, Do’s reworked placket that artfully wound from neck to underarm and around the back became visible on dress-length ones.
A handful of looks played on the idea of upcycling, with reworked souvenir T-shirts and shredded jeans. That idea of handwork was also given a high-end read in tailored looks made from fabrics reworked in collaboration with Philip Huang, whose Bangkok-based studio harnesses century-old dyeing techniques from Thailand such as indigo.
Breezy as it was, the lineup felt more muted than previous Do outings. But quietly cerebral clothes don’t make for bookish wallflowers. Just look at Vietnamese American drag performer and “RuPaul Drag Race” competitor Plastique Tiara, who closed the show with gusto.
