In the beginning, there was chaos.
If those words spell the start of many creation myths, for designer Ashi, it was a rather discombobulating feeling as he began to work on his fall couture.
“This collection doesn’t have a name, doesn’t have a title and you know me, I always have titles and stories,” said the designer, who only goes by his last name. “I didn’t have it so I went to the flea market just to get inspiration and I started to just grab small things.”
Embracing a magpie’s approach, he followed a path that meandered from the Grande Singerie room in the Chateau de Chantilly and the boudoirs of London’s Jack the Ripper era, gathering time-worn textiles, precious porcelains and even chinoiserie motifs.
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While all these would be well deserving of further description, given how they became intricate feather work and embroideries made of laser-cut mother-of-pearl fragments, it’s another idea that stood out strongest.
Sculptural corsetry, structures on display or on the contrary rendered invisible through moulage techniques were the keystone of a fall collection rife with hourglass silhouettes.
But Ashi’s eye for construction also yielded striking tailored jackets, an opulently embroidered coatdress and an asymmetric pantsuit with a spiraling fringe trim.
“The story is about the craft as well,” Ashi continued backstage. “We always forget that and we go into a story about a concept; here, it’s about the atelier, about the craftsmanship.” The impeccable execution of, say, a mermaid gown in beige tulle, its material leaving no room for approximation, certainly read as a paean to construction, craftsmanship and couture.