For SS26, Hung La’s LỰU ĐẠN closes its trilogy “MAYHEM,” “YOU DON’T BELONG HERE,” and now “NO MAN’S LAND”, with a collection that stares straight at the people society ignores. These are the ghosts of the American dream: immigrants who arrived educated, respected, only to be shoved into the shadows. La’s parents’ generation comes to mind, people who learned to survive in a system that called them inferior, their anger calcified into resilience.

The color story says it all. These aren’t vibrant hues shouting for attention, but muted tones that ask harder questions: What does it mean to fade? To have your color drained? It’s a visual metaphor for assimilation, the way people of color have historically sanded down their edges to fit in, trading pieces of themselves for a shot at acceptance. But La doesn’t just mourn that loss; he weaponizes it. The LỰU ĐẠN man doesn’t beg for a seat at the table. He builds his own from whatever’s around: industrial tarps, survival blankets, rubber, fisherman waders. These aren’t just materials, they’re armor, proof that survival itself can be a form of defiance.

There’s a brutal poetry in the details. Reflective tape glints like a warning. Fisherman waders, meant for labor, become high-fashion statements. It’s clothing that acknowledges the grind, the way immigrants turn struggle into something sharp, beautiful, unapologetic. La isn’t romanticizing hardship; he’s showing how the marginalized repurpose their surroundings, turning survival gear into symbols of identity.

Check out below the collection shot by Jori Komulainen: