2023
Lu’u Dan, self-initiated
Zine Concept
Lu’u Dan is a brand by London-based designer Hung
La. Inspired by Asian cinema and the East’s criminal underground, Lu’u Dan’s clothing challenges both the miseries and joys of what it means to be Asian in the Western world.
The art zine leans into this questioning of identity to provide, and even muddy, the context of how the brand portrays Asian narratives. A lack of commentary and the usage of inexplicable, but seemingly related, imagery reappropriates the Orient, taking the Western model of exoticizing the East and flipping it as a conduit for the brand’s ideals.
Contents contain direct references (Bosozoku culture, collage of Asian cinematic villains) as well as abstract
forms (Vietnamese mythology, Chinese astrology) juxtaposed with lookbook editorials. New image treatments, reframing, and a common gradient are
all used to solidify Lu’u Dan’s identity.
New outer accents accompanying the brand’s dual-snakes mark is lifted from 1950’s packaging for one of China’s oldest record companies.