The Lan coat from Oslo label 1313 SELAH reaches toward the floor. Its broad shoulders and long front give the wearer a strong outline before the eye reaches the smaller decisions: the front darts, the flap pockets, the metal buttons, the vent at the back. A coat of this length can appear to dictate how a person moves. The vent makes room for a stride. The inner pocket keeps something private inside a public silhouette. That negotiation between presence and use runs through the work of Duy Ngo, one of the label's two co-creative directors. He has also designed clothes for restaurant workers who need to carry plates, bend, turn and work through a shift. The long coat and the working uniform ask the same question from different directions: how much can a garment say without taking the wearer's place?
Ngo founded 1313 SELAH in Oslo with Tomás Silva and Erik Spanne in 2023. Silva shares creative direction; Spanne brings art direction and a background in music. A Vogue interview with the three founders identifies Ngo as a former head of menswear at Holzweiler and a London College of Fashion graduate. It describes his Vietnamese and Chinese heritage. A MUNCH museum account adds that he grew up in Østfold, that his father is Vietnamese, and that his mother has Vietnamese and Chinese roots. She worked as a seamstress and made clothes from drawings he produced as a child. Her work gave him an early, practical view of how a drawing becomes clothing. At 1313 SELAH, that knowledge enters a studio whose authorship is shared.
A first look with space around it
The label's 2023 debut, First Communion, contained thirteen looks. Vogue reported a tunic-length T-shirt over very wide trousers in the opening look. A T-shirt and trousers are familiar pieces, but the proportions change their relationship. The long upper garment crosses the place where a conventional shirt would end; the wide lower garment occupies space around the legs rather than tracing them. Neither piece needs to be made formally tailored to alter the body's outline. The look starts with accessible categories and stretches them until they take on the scale of something ceremonial.
Other debut pieces made the tension more explicit. Religious icons were sewn onto a double-breasted suit. A Madonna image appeared on a T-shirt. One leather coat was bonded with jersey, while a mohair jacket brought another, softer surface into the same collection. A large denim shirt was paired with jeans pieced in a cross shape. In their Vogue conversation, the founders described clothes working across tailored form, devotional image, street clothing and tactile fabric. The icon is not merely printed on a mood board; it sits on a suit that a person has to close and wear. The cross enters the seams of denim. Meaning reaches the garment through construction as well as image.
The look book was photographed at Lithuania's Hill of Crosses. The founders connected the place to the cover art of Cypress Hill's Black Sunday, which they had been listening to while shaping the label's first collection. That chain of references crosses religion, music and a specific site. It also shows why a single geographical label such as Scandinavian minimalism would say too little about the clothing. Silva brought experiences from Chile and Oslo; Spanne had worked in underground music; Ngo had trained and designed within fashion. The collection did not dissolve those positions into one origin story. It gave them a common set of silhouettes and signs to work through.
The first collection's title, First Communion, could invite a reading concerned only with ritual. Yet the cut of the opening T-shirt and trousers matters as much as the sacred image on another garment. A ceremonial reference can be worn as costume if the clothing has no convincing form of its own. Here the oversize line and altered denim seams make the body present inside the idea. The wearer has to choose how to occupy an unusually long top or a trouser leg that moves outward. The studio's interest in self-expression begins with that physical decision, before anyone decodes a symbol.
A coat that makes room to move
The current Lan coat takes the collection's interest in formal clothing to a longer scale. The studio specifies a heavyweight Italian twill in a blend of virgin wool and polyamide, with a full viscose lining. Padded shoulders, a semi-double-breasted front and sharp lapels give the coat structure. The darts bring the cloth in at the front; the back vent releases it again below. This is a piece that asks to be seen from a distance, but its construction recognizes the ordinary acts of walking, reaching into a pocket and closing a coat against weather.
The buttons carry polished nickel and black enamel. It is a small contrast in a garment whose major visual gesture is its length. The inner pocket closes with a tonal button, serving a different purpose from the visible front fastening. One detail contributes to the coat's surface; the other protects what the wearer carries. Looking at them together gives a more exact account of the studio's approach than calling the coat dramatic. The designers make a large silhouette legible through points of use. The coat's position on a person may be imposing, but the person still needs to live inside it.
The current outerwear range places the Lan beside bio-leather jackets, a reversible corduroy jacket, blazers, overshirts and a poncho. That spread matters because 1313 SELAH is building more than one spectacular show object. A customer can encounter its ideas in a jacket that ends closer to the waist or in an overshirt with a more casual role. The tailoring range likewise includes suit trousers and a pinstripe overshirt. Outerwear, tailoring and jersey are allowed to overlap rather than occupying fixed categories. This breadth is where a co-creative director's experience in menswear can be tested over time.
Ngo and Silva direct these clothes together, with Spanne shaping the studio's visual world. Their roles bring several cultural and professional references to the point where a jacket must be cut and sold. The Lan is a 1313 SELAH coat: its measured details meet a design language made by three founders. That arrangement gives Ngo a practice larger than the single menswear department he once led. The question for the partnership is whether its wide range can keep a common purpose while allowing each garment its own demands.
The collection leaves the runway
In 2024, the label presented its second collection, Repentance, at MUNCH. The museum's event record describes a presentation joining fashion, performance and music and developed with the artist Arif. It credits Ngo and Silva as co-creative directors and Spanne as art director, alongside named collaborators in photography, film, score, light, choreography, hair and makeup. Those credits matter. A show that combines several arts depends on a group whose work should not disappear beneath one designer's name. The clothes are still clothes, but the context changes how an audience first encounters them.
MUNCH described Repentance as a collection considering masculinity, regret and vulnerability. The words are broad until a viewer asks what a garment does with them. The debut's bonded leather, mohair and oversized denim had already placed hard and soft surfaces in one wardrobe. A long coat can give a wearer authority while its drape leaves the movement of the body visible. A double-breasted suit can carry an icon usually seen outside an office or a street. The studio's staging enlarged those tensions with sound and performance. It did not create them from nothing. Their first form was the choice of fabric, line and ornament.
At MUNCH, garment, music and performer were set beside one another in the same presentation. The clothes met an audience in motion rather than only as isolated product images. Their scale changes as someone walks, turns or stands among other people. A photograph of the Lan coat can record its length, but a moving person reveals the purpose of its vent. The museum setting gave the studio space to show how its silhouettes behave as bodies and sound pass through them.
By Oslo Runway's 2026 schedule, the label remained an active presence in Norwegian fashion. The event again named the three founders and described the mixture of tailoring, street clothing and ceremonial elements. A studio that began with thirteen looks now has to answer to ongoing production, fittings, customers and collaborators. A devotional image or an exaggerated trouser leg has a different life once it leaves the presentation and enters a wardrobe. The question of how a symbolic garment survives everyday life becomes more urgent as the label grows.
A uniform that belongs to its worker
The 1313 SELAH commission for Oslo restaurant Credo gives a different measure of Ngo's practice. In a 2026 Aftenposten interview, he described uniforms made specifically for the restaurant, drawing on Nordic and Japanese minimalist references. The reporter describes black clothing for staff; Ngo explains that the team wanted strong design identity with as few seams as possible. The garments were intended to suit employees across gender and role. For cooks, the cloth had to endure tougher use. These requirements are not a backstage distraction from fashion. They make the designer answer to bodies at work.
Ngo's account of the Credo project gives function a precise meaning. A server's clothes must let the person do the job. The uniform should be comfortable, durable where needed and adaptable to more than one body. A seam has a cost and a purpose; reducing seams changes both the surface and the way a garment is made. Black can give a group a clear visual identity, but it does not carry a tray or protect someone during a long shift. The garment must earn its place through movement and wear. The commission asks a designer known for expressive menswear to restrain an image without surrendering intention.
The Lan announces an individual at a distance; the Credo uniform must help a staff member work within a shared service. Yet both have to leave room for the person. A floor-length coat without a vent could restrict a stride; a uniform too focused on brand appearance could burden its wearer. Ngo's work in these settings does not collapse into one recognizable outline. He returns to the relation between design identity and a body's task, whether that task is entering a room or moving through an evening's service.
The studio's public language emphasizes politics, spirituality and cultural heritage. At Credo, Ngo spoke about durability, comfort and who actually wears the clothes. The expressive runway collection and the restrained work garment make different demands of him. One gives an individual a large image to inhabit; the other gives a team clothing they can work in. Their shared ground is the refusal to treat the wearer as a mannequin for an idea.
What belongs to Ngo
The MUNCH account of Ngo's upbringing places a seamstress and a child drawing clothes in the same family story. A drawing could become an object that someone cut and stitched. Later, training at London College of Fashion and responsibility for menswear at Holzweiler placed him in other systems of making. At 1313 SELAH, construction and use remain visible questions, from the coats and trousers in its range to the restaurant uniform that must endure a shift.
First Communion credits name Ngo and Silva as co-creative directors and Spanne as art director. MUNCH's Repentance credits repeat that structure. The label says the founders' subcultures and musical lives shape its clothing. Silva's Chilean background and Spanne's musical practice are among the experiences that place Latinx street references and Norwegian underground sound near a tailored coat. Ngo's contribution is named within that partnership; the shared authorship is part of what the clothes are.
The present range gives that shared authorship a practical test. The Lan coat's twill, front darts and back vent ask to be assessed as tailoring. The wider wardrobe includes jerseys, denim, knitwear and accessories, each requiring different kinds of judgment. A long coat will hold its outline through heavier cloth; a jersey top changes shape against the body and in the wash. The studio's authority depends on how convincingly its ideas survive those different materials. The wearer encounters the work through a shoulder, a seam, a fastening or the cloth around a knee, even if a show first drew attention through music and light.
The debut's long tee and wide trousers alter scale; the cross-pieced jeans turn a motif into construction; the current Lan coat pairs a formidable outline with a vent and useful pockets. The Credo uniform carries the studio's attention to cut into a quieter setting. These are different answers to different briefs. Together they form a more varied Oslo wardrobe than any one style of coat or suit could carry.
Ngo now occupies a place in Norwegian fashion that is both individual and collaborative. His family history, training and Holzweiler role are his. The collections, commissions and shows of 1313 SELAH are made with Silva, Spanne and other credited contributors. A garment moves from a sketch to a pattern, from a fitting to a person, from a studio to a restaurant or a street. In the Lan, a vent releases the stride beneath an imposing length. At Credo, a uniform lets a worker keep moving through the evening. Ngo's design work meets the body at both moments.