First things first: A Magazine has a new editor-in-chief. In June, Blake Abbie, the glossy’s former editor-at-large, quietly took over from Dan Thawley, who sat at the top of the magazine’s masthead for over 10 years. For his first issue, the actor and editor looked close to home.
Abbie met the designer Peter Do a decade ago when they were both new New Yorkers. Do was fresh off his stint at Céline, and Abbie, who had been living in London, wanted to be closer to home in Vancouver. They’ve been close friends ever since, their personal lives often intertwining with their professional careers. Abbie walked Do’s spring 2023 runway show, and now he’s invited the Vietnamese-born designer to curate his first issue of A Magazine.
A year prior to Abbie’s model turn, Do staged his debut runway show. The spring 2022 collection cemented his arrival as one of the most exciting names in New York fashion—one of those “you had to be there” moments. Titled “Home,” it was the first time that Do addressed his Vietnamese origins in his work. This issue bears the same name.
On the topic of his Asian-American identity, Do says that, like all facets of his intersectional identity, it inspires his work rather than defines it. For this issue, he returned to his hometown of Biên Hòa, Vietnam, for the second time since emigrating to Philadelphia back in 2004. The magazine contains images of his latest work photographed in his childhood home. It is as meta as it is dissociative—the latest iteration of Do contextualized in the place where his story started.
The Peter Do of today is not the Peter Đỗ of then, and it’s the awareness of this growth, of this multiplicity of self, that makes the issue such an intimate portrait. “I’m not bound by where I come from because it doesn’t feel like home anymore,” said the 32 year-old. Home is where Peter finds himself, and today it happens to be in this issue of A Magazine.
One evening last week, I paid the pair a visit at Do’s Helmut Lang office in the meatpacking district. They took an hour away from the arduous task of selecting a cover (the issue was going to print soon after) to talk to me about this collaboration. Here are the highlights from our conversation.
Let’s start from the beginning. What was the genesis of this issue?
Blake Abbie: I took over the magazine after the men’s shows in June, and I immediately texted Peter. He had been on my list of people to work with for a while and we’ve been friends for a long time, but I also just really admire what he does. Especially being in New York, I think that Peter has had a true impact culturally. He also just started Helmut this year, so as soon as that happened I knew this had to happen. Peter, I remember you said you didn’t know if you could do this, that you were very busy,
Peter Do: I said this is a huge honor, but I had so many projects going on. The BR [Banana Republic] thing was happening, and I had just started this [Helmut Lang]. I wanted to do this well, it’s one of my dreams come true, and I was so happy for you, Blake, because you deserve it, so I wanted it to be good.
BA: I never doubted that. But what I said to you in that conversation is that this magazine is not precious. It’s supposed to be a moment in time. Yes, you’ll hopefully keep it on your coffee table for your whole life, but it’s not supposed to be a monograph. It’s supposed to be fun, not conclusive.
Peter, you’ve been very intentional about portraying yourself as a very private person. How do you balance the idea of doing something like this while still preserving your privacy?
PD: We definitely talked about that, and that’s why I’m absent in the magazine, in a way. You feel my hand in it, and you feel me in the conversations. It feels like home, my home, but I’m not physically in it.
BA: But we were able to convince you to sit down for a portrait [laughs]. But the magazine acts like a frame. It invites new ideas and voices into it, so we invited voices close to Peter into the frame, and we do get very close to Peter. The story that opens the magazine is his mom shot in this studio. In custom Helmut Lang and PD [Peter Do].
What did it feel like to put your mom in the issue, Peter?
PD: For so long my mom didn’t really understand what I was doing. As a child of immigrant parents, I spent my whole life convincing them that what I was doing was the right path for me because they always worry about whether or not you’ll have money for rent or to support yourself. There’s been moments when I would call my mom and just tell her I didn’t make enough money and that I needed help, so she’s seen me go through so much. That moment [Do’s debut show at Helmut Lang] I think gave her the comfort that I’ve actually made something of myself.
BA: The idea of a creative career for our parents, who were immigrants, was just never an option. Similarly for me, my mom has no clue of what I do [laugh].
How did she react when you asked her to do this?
PD: I don’t think she understood what I was asking until that day when she saw the whole team here. The photographer, Huy Luong, spoke to her in Vietnamese. It was also her 50th birthday, so we surprised her with a cake after the shoot. I don’t think she’s ever had a moment where it was about her in this way, so I was really emotional that day too. The [Helmut Lang] taxi dress was the first thing I made that she said she felt really beautiful in, and that’s what I want Helmut to be. To speak beyond fashion people. For her PD is a little crazy [laughs], but Helmut spoke to her.
Peter, what would you like people to learn about you with this issue?
PD: There’s so many things I found out about myself through this issue. There’s a conversation between my two brand managers, Sarah, who is my right hand here at Helmut, and Joanna, who is my right hand at PD [Peter Do]. They have a talk about how we met at FIT, and about my process. At PD, the team and I grew up together, and here there is more of a hierarchy. I’m this “creative director” and people are more careful, it’s like is he in a good mood today? [laughs].
BA: It’s also the way you present yourself to the world. With a mask on, with your back to photos. People don’t understand that you have a softness, and I hope they do through the magazine.
You are a very approachable person, which I think people don’t really know.
PD: Yes. I’m not shy, I’m not socially awkward. I just prefer my private life.
Blake, what’s the theme for this issue?
BA: The magazine is centered around home from the perspective of being immigrants, finding home in New York, building a new home, and those kinds of ideas. We explore what our memories of home are, and what is a memory and how it is held. That’s where the ideas of space, scent, feeling, and sound come in, which is how we find Peter’s presence in the magazine, by understanding his relationship to these ideas. For example, Peter doesn’t listen to a lot of music, so there is an essay by Mary HK Choi about her personal relationship to sound and silence being in New York, and a photo essay by Hart Leshkina about creating scent through images.
Peter, what was your role in the creation of the essays?
PD: This is my first time trusting the process and having a distance and allowing myself to have surprises. I found it very refreshing. I’ve been in control of everything for so long, it was nice to step back. I think it feels a lot more personal and less specific to a brand or aesthetic driven. This magazine is not about my work, not about PD, the brand, or about Helmut.
So it’s a magazine about Peter Do, the person.
PD: It is and feels really personal. There’s a beautiful story, which is one of my favorites. There was some drama with it, with timings and customs, but it’s the perfect example of when you plan everything and it doesn’t go according to plan but you just make it work and something beautiful still comes from it. We shot this in my childhood home, where I grew up in Vietnam.
How did you get access to the home, is it still in your family?
PD: It’s not. When my parents came to America, my brother and I were passed around my family a lot. No one wanted to take care of us [laughs], so there’s a few places I grew up in. But where we lived the most in Vietnam was in my childhood home, and now there’s somebody else living there so we had to rent it out.
How much has it changed?
PD: A lot. Everything has changed. It felt like a time capsule. I’ve been to Vietnam one other time other than this one, and it was 10 years after I left. This is the second time I’ve been back, twice in 20 years. It feels like a time machine. Everyone is older and things feel smaller. That garden photo, I remember, it used to feel so big to me, but it’s just a square garden; it’s so strange to even drive past what used to be rice fields which are now just buildings.
Every year my parents ask if I’m going “back home.” And when I return to New York, my friends here also ask me when I’m coming “home.” Home is both but neither to me, so I’m curious what home is to you both now?
PD: For myself and for many other queer people, I feel like I’ve been so many different people. I have morphed myself to survive or to be invisible. When I was in Vietnam I was different, I didn’t understand what being gay was until I moved to Philadelphia in 2004. But even then I had to be another person. Not until college in New York did I feel like I could breathe, so New York has a special place in my heart, it’s where I call home because it’s the first place I truly felt at home, like myself. With this issue I wanted to come home, to go home or what was home. See where I grew up, shoot my work there. But it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Europe didn’t feel like home to me either when I moved there for Céline. I used to be in meetings where everyone spoke French and I had no idea of what they were saying, and no one explained it to me either. I wasn’t home.
BA: I think home is the people you surround yourself with, that’s really what it is. People that you can really be yourself around is where you find home. I have been able to have that experience in every place I venture to, but it’s also a difficult conversation to have as a mixed-race person. I also don’t deny the fact that one of the reasons for being really interested in working with Peter on this issue is because we have this experience of being Asian immigrants in this industry. It’s not that we wanted to shout it, but it is an important moment, especially for Peter and especially for a lot of people seeing him achieve what he has achieved so far.
Did either of you watch the movie Past Lives? I bring it up because there is a pivotal scene at the end where Greta Lee’s character is talking to Teo Yoo’s and she tells him that the girl he knew back in South Korea doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve personally made my peace with that about myself. Did you feel a similar confrontation going back to Vietnam?
PD: Yes I did see it! And yes, I did feel it. It’s weird because we were staying in hotels in the city I lived in, and when I would speak Vietnamese people would speak English back to me, as if they knew I’m not from there. Even though I look like people there, they don’t see me or think of me as a Vietnamese person anymore. It made me want to freshen up my Vietnamese [laughs], but also that something is wrong with me or that something is missing. It’s interesting.
On the topic of home, I’m curious if either of you have an object that reminds you of home or your hometowns, and how was that included in the issue?
BA: We had a conversation about opening with Peter’s mom and looking for the ending, the closing story, and we spoke about this box of things, objects, that Peter loves and cares for. We photographed them and that’s how we ended the magazine.
PD: There is one that is really important to me. There is a tape from my fifth birthday there that my aunt brought to the US when she came to visit a few months ago. I haven’t seen it in a long time, it’s a VHS so I have to find someone to convert it for me. When my parents were living in the US, we would make these birthday tapes for them to see. I don’t even know who the people in the video are anymore, I’m sure, but there’s something about knowing that there’s a version of me that I left behind in there, a past life, in there. There’s also a Joan Didion book I read a few times when my dad passed away that helped me a lot, there’s some tear stains in it [laughs], and the notebook I had when I moved to Europe and worked at Céline.
BA: I have a necklace that my dad would wear when he was alive. I don’t even know where he got it, I think on a fishing trip in northern Quebec in the ’70s or something. It smells of him for some reason, so I have it.
Peter, I’m curious about whether you think your Vietnamese-ness informs your work or your business. You mentioned this idea of avoiding a Western lens, but you also do live here and work here. This came up in your work in your spring 2022 collection, right?
PD: That collection was also called “Home,” and it was the first time I talked about it because I didn’t want to box the brand into this idea of the “Asian-American designer.” I didn’t want people to only talk about using references to Vietnam in my collections, or even where I worked before, I refused to talk about it. I always wanted it to be about what I’m doing now. There’s elements of my identity in the work, but it sometimes feels like who I used to be versus who I am now. I am influenced by the West myself, I live here.
BA: The conversation also shifted from the first time we talked about the magazine. About shooting in Vietnam, doing it with Vietnamese people.
PD: Yes, that was never a question, but I think going there with the magazine versus going there with my work is different. Doing it with my work almost feels like appropriating. That was my fear, coming back to a space after 20 years and pretending it’s completely yours. People dress differently in Vietnam, my mom dresses differently in Vietnam. That collection was me looking back and asking her how she dressed, to show me pictures with my dad. I didn’t grow up with my parents so we didn’t have relationships with each other where we talked about things like that. But it was still looking back. That’s why for me it was so emotional to have Ocean [Vuong]’s writing at the Helmut show and that quote about missing her and making her sad. No matter what people say or think about that, I feel like for me that was important, for people and for her to see the actual words on the runway.
BA: What I find interesting is that at one point in the end, over the last few weeks we chose to actually refer to Peter in the magazine as Peter Đỗ, using his Vietnamese last name with all the actual diacritics. The magazine is supposed to focus on the person, on the designer rather than the work of the designer. This one was about figuring out who Peter the person is more than anything, that was the most important from my side.
And who is Peter Đỗ?
PD: That was the question of the issue, but I don’t think we answered it [laughs].
A Magazine curated by Peter Do is out December 7th.
