Ashi Studio’s spring runway became a stage for the sensual and surreal, as the mononymous designer presented a collection that fused historical references with technical mastery.
Corsets, constructed using 18th-century techniques, cinched waists tightly, accentuating hips and ultra-feminine bell-shaped silhouettes. Dresses and peplums often extended into rounded, shell-like forms.
Ashi said he has long been fascinated with the Victorian era’s fixation with control, mourning and desire.
Hair was braided, twisted and sculpted into intricate swirls incorporated into the gowns, referencing the era’s mourning jewelry, or trailing down the back like a spine. Other looks featured ghostly handprints under layers of gauze, long-lost love letter script and red wax seals. This gave the collection a sometimes otherworldly effect, emphasized all the more with dangling skeleton keys and death moths.
You May Also Like
Inside the glowing cocoon of a white tent, the lighting further pushed Ashi’s manipulation of material into the realm of illusion.
He treated cotton with a glue technique that appeared as a dripping wetness clinging to the body, and a trompe l’oeil painting transformed flat material into an intricate bow and draping look. A plastic covering skimming the body under one look rendered the model in the glossy perfection of a porcelain doll.
Much of this work was done in collaboration with artists who normally work on film sets, such as the hair design team from last year’s “Dracula,” he noted.
One standout black sequined gown was cut in a dramatic T-shape in the back, accented with tassels along the vertebrae, and the back was the focus of many pieces, including pearl-drenched bustles and trains.
Accessories carried a surreal touch as well, or perhaps macabre, including clutch handles fashioned from antique doorknob human heads the designer collected at Paris’s Marché Clignancourt.
Much has been made of the return of the corset this season, which has been seen on several runways — not to mention a certain billionaire’s Venetian wedding last summer — and Ashi met the moment, framing it as a statement of feminine empowerment.
“Everyone wants to be snatched,” he said.