Two days ahead of the Lu’u Dan showroom visit, I was walking down rue Saint Martin when I spotted founder and designer, Hung La, seated at a table outside playing mahjong—his well-acknowledged pastime. Later that afternoon, I began seeing Lu’u Dan campaign posters in different parts of the city, featuring two portraits from some underworld. Finally arriving at our official appointment, I was no longer surprised to find La back outside, this time playing with his models, whom he introduced as, “little gangsters—should I call you that?” All these interactions provided a prelude for the latest designs, which La revealed with a disclaimer.
“We have been on such a positive arc; I wanted a tinge of darkness this season. I felt kind of alone in my struggle and journey. It’s an uphill battle all the time, trying to push something different,” he said, adding descriptions such as angst and alienation.
The collection’s central idea goes back to his style as a fashion student in Antwerp, deliberately “digging into something disheveled, a little grimy” assembled from ripped-up and salvaged garments. Cue his little gangsters, one of them outfitted in nylon wadded “sleeping bag” pants with tearaway snaps worn over a long track jacket tied with a rubber tube belt. All covered up, yet alluding to a new strain of fetish spotted elsewhere this week.
It’s not often you hear a muse described as “a vagrant, [someone who] loves Asian gore films, he is probably homele.
