After taking a break from fashion, Peter Do spent a month travelling through Vietnam with photographer Philipp Paulus capturing the people and places that inspire him
Peter Do is back after a much-needed rest. Last November, the Vietnamese-American designer stepped away from his dream role as Helmut Lang’s creative director after just 18 months, underscoring the challenges of reviving a legacy label’s relevance in turbulent times. After seven years of tireless work, Do also paused things at his namesake brand. The designer’s last collection – a poetic display at Paris’s Musée Guimet, presented last October during the Spring/Summer 2025 shows – expanded on the codes that have propelled Peter Do’s meteoric rise, where stories of his Southeast Asian heritage are woven into a wardrobe of sharp, contemporary elegance. Burnt out and ready to get away from it all, the designer ended the year by planning an escape to Vietnam.
Taking photographer Philipp Paulus along with him, the pair travelled from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, tracing a snaking line through Vinh Hy Bay, Núi Chúa National Park, Cau Gay village, Da Lat, and the designer’s hometown of Biên Hòa. A new book arriving this September, titled Vietnam, presents an evocative postcard from the trip, capturing local communities and models in featherlight looks from Do’s last collection. Moments of fleeting beauty offer a journey into the bustling streets, sticky heat, and breathtaking tropical landscapes that form the fabric of Vietnam, gathered beneath a tactile stitch-bound cloth cover. A love letter to the people and places that have continually inspired Do since he founded his brand in 2018, the book is also a testament to the importance of pausing to reconnect with oneself.
“I took a break for the first time in years to step away from the constant noise and pressure of producing,” Do says. “That month in Vietnam became an essential reset – a period of quiet that felt both grounding and healing. Being there allowed me to slow down, to observe, and to truly listen. I saw new perspectives through the people I met and the places I moved through, and it reminded me why I started creating in the first place. Even with all the distance we covered, it felt like we barely scratched the surface of what Vietnam holds.”
Known for his clean yet lively portraiture, often shot on the streets of New York, Do first met Paulus on set back in 2019 after the designer enlisted him to shoot a campaign. “What started as one project turned into an ongoing dialogue, and we haven’t stopped working together since,” says the designer. “Each collaboration feels like an extension of that first moment – natural, exciting, and rooted in trust and mutual respect.” Paulus adds, “One of the many things I admire in Peter’s work is how deeply it comes from him – it’s never trend-driven or decorative, it’s rooted in honesty.” In Vietnam, an ability to let days unfold away from the demands of commercial work led to their most rewarding collaboration yet. “I think the absence of pressure to sell the clothes was what truly guided us,” says Do. “Without that weight, we were free to approach the project with curiosity. What mattered was highlighting and celebrating the people and places in front of us.”
Travelling to Vietnam as an outsider, Paulus was careful to ensure the images didn’t feel voyeuristic. “I didn’t want to present Vietnam as a postcard version of itself, or as an outsider’s exotic gaze,” he says. “What Peter and I tried to trace was something more elusive. The pause of a smoke break, the red wash of a traffic light at night, the way silk sticks to skin in the humidity. The portrait that emerges, I hope, feels like memory – fragmented, tender, sometimes restless.” This feeling can be distilled in one particular memory from the trip on a midnight minibus through Da Lat. “The windows were fogged, the light inside flickered between red and green, and there was this quiet intimacy with everyone half-asleep, swaying together,” Paulus remembers. “I photographed it almost instinctively, and when I look at that image now, it feels like the city itself is breathing.”
Returning to New York rested and inspired, Do describes the trip as both a personal and creative kind of awakening. “The freedom was transformative for me,” he says. “I realised how much I had missed my own process: the discipline, the experimentation, the joy of making.” While the designer is absent from the S/S26 runway schedule, which gets underway this week in New York, he will be bringing this refocused new energy to the future of his brand – designing for the love of it once more, and crucially, on his own terms. “I’m returning to it with intention,” he says. “I want to design on my own terms again: slowly, steadily, and with clarity. I’m rebuilding a practice that feels honest to me.”
Vietnam by Philipp Paulus and Peter Do is self-published and is available for pre-order now.
