Ashlyn (Q2723)
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Ashlyn is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Ashlyn |
Ashlyn is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
At Cristina Grajales Gallery, Ashlynn Park presented a collection among design objects she had curated from the gallery’s collection. This juxtaposition of old and new objects paralleled the designer’s overall process for spring 2025, which began, she said, “with revisiting the history of fashion.” Her icons are Madame Grès, Christian Dior, Azzedine Alaïa (whose collection Park visited recently), and Yohji Yamamoto (with whom Park once worked). Their work, she explained, “always gives a right and clear answer when I face a challenge. I feel like we have so many challenges and we constantly look to the future, but the answers and the solutions are often already there [in the past].”Since she launched her line, Park’s work has often been compared to that of Yamamoto (who has himself taken fashion history as a theme), and that will likely be the reaction to Park’s take on the tuxedo, a one-button mid-length black coat with a bit of an hourglass shape that’s an explosion black and white at the back as the shirt and coat back dance together. Park is familiar with the famous bustle backed coat that was recently exhibited in Milan, but it was seeing how meticulously Alaïa had engineered a shirt and jacket that inspired her smoking look.Park spent a month and a half getting the tension right in a black, draped Grecian gown a la Grès in jersey with a rolled detail at the waist. (Another version, in red, was nicely styled over a simple long-sleeved top.) Like a trim eel-skin tunic and an asymmetric leather corset top, these gowns made use of the designer’s puzzle-piece technique.Television show or no, Christian Dior is a constant reference for Park. Her take on the iconic Bar jacket jettisoned the padded hips; rather the hip panniers floated on a cloud of tulle and exposed boning that topped a long, draped skirt. This was a take-the-stuffing-out-of-things moment. Under the jacket was a simple bra. Similar in silhouette, but not construction, was a white sleeveless dress with a romantic peplum made using a no-waste technique in which squares of material are connected.The looks in the second room stood like the Erechtheion’s Porch of the Maidens caryatids at the Acropolis. It was easy to imagine Chessy Rayner or Mica Ertegun gravitating to a black column dress with a Fontana-like slash of white.
The combination of new, more evening-focused designs with more familiar, and in the case of a kilt and a shirtdress, casual looks, was discordant, regardless of the appeal of the individual pieces.Park’s exploration of past fashion included her own back catalog, specifically spring 2023, which featured a performance by the dancer and choreographer Yin Yue. This season’s take on the past work was a jersey jumpsuit with a slightly-low, V-shaped yoke and draped harem-style pants. It was styled with a bandeau-like cardigan that revealed a sliver of skin at the shoulder. There was something rather Martha Graham about this look; at the same time, it was of the moment, as a similar silhouette, derived from different sources was seen at Alaïa by Pieter Mulier and at Norma Kamali. The idea of softly gathered material that accommodates movement is related, more broadly, to freedom.
11 September 2024
Monsieur Christian Dior advocated for small pockets. It’s an edict that designer Ashlynn Park has followed—until now. Having chosen travel as the organizing principle of her resort collection, Park said she “purposely added pockets as a detail.” But these were no normal pockets. She instead made delicious little drawstring pouches with hidden back compartments, adding them to a tunic top with insets of bias-cut chiffon and a white denim jacket paired with matching carpenter jeans.With her once-a-year pre-collection, Park wanted to emphasize everyday looks. This season she set herself the goal of making “some kind of uniform for travel.” Park said she was “thinking about adaptability, more wearable pieces for an everyday lifestyle,” and she extended that idea by working with a street style photographer on the look book.Closet staples include a nylon-look anorak that is actually made of a water-repellent wool, and very desirable thin knits, including a long slim skirt with lots of give and raw-edged chiffon inserts on the side seams. The designer reported that customers have been responding well to her experiments with deconstruction, and so she continued them. The complicated pattern-making of last season was simplified and used to create dimensional pockets on a flowy summery dress. Park’s many-seamed shirt has acquired short sleeves and has been extended into a shirtdress that’s refreshingly not so classic. The pièce de résistance is a black scoop-neck tunic with an ivory under-peplum constructed of squares of fabric that have the fragile flutter of flower petals.
11 June 2024
To show or not to show? That is the question many are asking in these tough times. Having staged an intimate show last season, the pragmatic Ashlynn Park decided that for fall she’d dedicate the time that would have been spent on runway rigmarole towards realizing her heart’s desire: a return to her haberdashery roots.Park’s first job out of school was working on menswear for Yohji Yamamoto; she did the same for Raf Simons at Calvin Klein. “I felt endless joy doing menswear patterns and then designing for men,” she said on a walk-through. “It was a new world for me as a woman, new discovery, endless questions.” The designer maintains an inquiring mind, and the solve she worked for this season was creating a stand-alone line for guys and bringing elements of that into the women’s line. Park has done tailoring before but she really went deep into the subject and brought us all along for the ride via her use of deconstruction. A russet colored coat, for example, revealed its cotton linen linings and internal structures. Tailoring is a kind of architecture after all. Other pieces in the lookbook were styled back-to-front or worn inside-out to emphasize the make of the clothes.The designer’s second mission was to come up with her brand’s uniform: she settled on a neatly cropped jacket revealing the flutter of a white shirt poking out under it, and a skort; a garment that had the duality that was the overall theme of the collection.Spring saw the introduction of Ashlyn’s puzzle blouse. The designer continued perfecting it, and this season applied it to a meticulously mitred gray pinstripe dress as well as a plain black one. The myriad pieces were placed to create a Charles James-ian kind of dimensionality, but without horsehair or heaviness. Ashlyn’s menswear launch is similarly being teased this season, and will be perfected and further developed until Park is ready to take it to market, but the conversation between the two lines is a trenchant and engaging one.Flou was not neglected in the fall line-up. Adding a touch of color was a rich burgundy V-neck dress in satin-back crepe. Park’s alternative to a smoking look was a white draped dress worn over a black shirt with an asymmetric collar in a contrasting material. It looked both like a fashion plate from the days when Paul Poiret reigned, and also had the elegant, unstructured effortlessness that women want today.
12 February 2024
The grains of sand in the oyster of Ashlynn Park’s life and work are career and motherhood; the tension between them results in the “pearls” she strings into her collections. This one, presented in Lisa Perry’s Design Studio, was a real gem, in which elements from past outings beautifully coalesced.The clothes felt more fluid and seemed to have more room around them, in the sense that they weren’t so much framed by a narrative or a mood that needed to be projected outwards to the audience. This collection was, all at once, a celebration of craft, making, communal effort, play, and letting go. Backstage before the show, Park, whose two daughters were with her, noted that their toys had influenced her thinking. Her metaphor for the season was a puzzle, the pieces based on squares and rectangles.Since launching her line, Park has worked with zero-waste methods; essentially it’s a form of noninterference. This season the designer applied that approach to her management style as well; the team—Park’s second family—worked under her direction, all contributing and making together. This is in line with the kind of healthy work/life balance she wants to achieve (regular hours and the like); if Park wants the business to grow, it’s necessary to be able to delegate.All the pieces of the puzzle came together today in a collection that was beautiful from the inside out. Park is a patternmaker, and it seems that her clothes can be so light, so right, because they are so carefully considered. They have good bones, as it were.Like Karl Lagerfeld and her mentor Yohji Yamamoto, Park appreciates the sanctity of black and white. The show opened with a jersey look, an important material for the designer this season, that referenced the traditional Korean dangui, a narrow-sleeved T-shaped garment with curved sides. Frothing from a small peplum at the waist was the most delicate frill of petals, all cut from chiffon squares. Something similar was done in white cotton shirting.Creating rhythm in the collection was a back-and-forth between control and release—a many-seamed jacket petaling out at the hips, liquid trousers balanced with more structured tops. Often the silhouette was almost broken into three planes, as in the pink jersey ensemble worn by Nora Svenson where the jacket extended over a skirt which was worn over pants. Another variation of this was Tasha Tilberg’s look, a black suit with a tunic top that draped below the jacket.
The work of the artist Claire Watson inspired a dress that combined chiffon and crepe, materials with different opacities. Checked fabrics made an appearance, and Park, as usual, included a sports element, in the form of zip-front jackets with beautiful shaped backs. These were clothes to love, admire, and wear. Near the end of the show, familiar notes from the overture ofThe Nutcrackerrang out, a reminder perhaps that it takes a little bit of magic, as well as a whole lot of skill, to make sense of the many facets of womanhood. This collection showed it can be done. Park is a talent to believe in.
13 September 2023
With her first resort collection, Ashlynn Park revisited some of her signature pieces—a pleated miniskirt, a tailored coat, a shaped jacket—and gave them a new sense of relevance by shooting them on the street style in New York City and in her own office.Having made a beautiful presentation in an art gallery last season, the more carefree attitude of these photos was a reminder that as special as Park’s designs are, they are really suited for the day-to-day grind. She knows this very well, being a small business owner and a working mother. Park can do dreamy dress-up looks, such as this season’s knockout draped pinstripe suspender dress with its frothy white tiered mermaid tail. But this is only one aspect of the designer’s work; through the precision of her cut and fabric choices she also has the ability to transform a classic peacoat into something delightful and desirable.Park said she looked at resort as more of a time to “calm down and relax, and just to see essential things and clean.” To that end she attached shirting and minis to create uniform-chic dresses. She also streamlined the curved shapes of her “Tudors” inspired jacket from fall and paired it with a soft-tiered skirt; a new New Look.“I’m trying to be optimistic in every way,” noted Park. “I have to really enjoy all the process that’s involved.” The pleasure of creating and refining is present in this lineup. Adding to the feel-good mood is that the collection was made using fabric Park already had in her inventory.
21 June 2023
In a digital world we have access to almost everything. The casting, the mood boards, the backstage, the beauty; almost every aspect of a fashion show has been revealed. The one thing that remains under wraps is the actual process of design. There are many approaches to making, some people sketch, others work on a form, for example. Ashlynn Park does the latter, and at Cristina Grajales Gallery, this patternmaker who trained with Yohji Yamamoto whipped up a toile of one of the sidesaddle riding skirts in her collection, the finished version of which a model then wore. The designer, who seemed lost in the process while pinning and cutting, was trembling afterwards. It’s not just that Park is not an extrovert, but that she gives so much of herself to the work. “Each piece really comes from my two hands,” she said at a preview. “When I look back in history, when I see Madame Grès, Vionnet, Charles James, those designers are always standing next to the clothing and the mannequin, and then they will grab the fabric and the scissors. They made their own work,” said Park—and so does she. This is not as common as you might think. This mother of two describes her business as being like another child. “This is a passion that demands endurance and focus,” she said. “It’s not meant to be easy…. I know what I’m doing stands for something.”This season a visit to “The Tudors” exhibition at the Met piqued Park’s interest, and she chose the prince as her theme for fall. She looked at 16th-century sources, and an intricately pieced diamond pattern that appeared on a pleated skirt wouldn’t look out of place on a pennant flying from a medieval castle. Hourglass jackets had a “tail” detail taken from armor, and a fleur de lis–like pattern looked like those on precious velvets in museum collections. Though there were many historical references, including a detachable ruff, Park’s work is not retro. In fact she takes the proportion play we’ve been seeing across the board a step further. It might take a minute for the eye to adjust to seeing a pleated mini (which related back to the tomboy/school uniform references in the fall 2022 collection) peeking from an arch in a draped skirt, but the combination, with its reveal of skin, was exciting. Park said many of the looks in this collection were at the “boundary of the gender.” They were women’s clothes inspired by menswear and a male archetype.
“I tried something that confused, fusing the pants and skirts, and then we finally found the perfect balance,” the designer said. That wasn’t the whole story, however. This was the first time that Park had used any accessories, and she designed the brooches in the collection.Clothes are coming closer to the body again, and both the hourglass shape and a focus on breasts are prevalent. Both came together in a standout piece in this collection, a coat jigsawed together from puzzle pieces that recalled a woman’s anatomy. Park is not just focused on the body and the garment, but the space in between, what in Japan is known as ma. There’s another element that was present in that piece, and this collection: Park’s own hands. These are clothes made with skill, love, and in the tradition of chivalry, devotion.
13 February 2023
Where do mothers fit in a Carrie Bradshaw world? It’s surprising how infrequently motherhood comes up as a subject in the world of fashion. I’ve lost count of how many designers have spoken to me about dressing “their woman” to go from office to dinner, but I can’t recall one suggesting an outfit would be good for a PTA fundraiser, school conference, or family vacation (which might explain why Lululemon has become the default suburban uniform).For spring, Ashlynn Park, pattern-maker extraordinaire, presented her first runway show. Maybe because it was such a momentous occasion, she decided to get personal about motherhood (both in relation to her children and her business). “Honestly, it is so hard being a mother and then continuing my career,” she said. “If I win something there, I have to lose something [somewhere else].” Nevertheless, like so many others, she persisted (which is a boon for women looking for beautifully made, adult, clothes). Resilience was the name of the collection.The show, which was held, aptly, at La Mama theater, was about the joys and vicissitudes of motherhood, and opened with a performance by dancer and choreographer Yin Yue, with whom Park collaborated. Washington might be trying to regulate reproductive rights, but no legislation can interfere with nature; women’s bodies change considerably during and after pregnancy. Yue’s movements captured some of the physicality of maternity; the beautiful collection provided a sartorial interpretation.Like a child, a brand has attributes that give it a personality and define its character. Park’s forte is pattern making, which she learned when working for Yohji Yamamoto. For spring the designer continued with her zero-waste concept, creating garments from a single piece of fabric. What looked like an abstract pattern on the floor of the stage was actually the pattern for one of the pieces in the collection.The upside down-ness of family life was represented by the inside-out and deconstructed tailoring at the show’s opening. The first look, a single-shouldered “push pull” jacket coincidently worked the one-and-done look that’s been popping up all week. It was followed by a ruffled blouse of Edwardian prettiness and modern appeal worn with generous black trousers. A superlative example of Park’s hand at shirting was a white cotton poplin corset top, the collar and sleeves falling free like streamers over black satin-back crepe pants.
The look was as easy, sexy, and modern as it was ingenious.Some of the single square looks with the off-center ruffles had a whiff of Yohji about them; less expected was the way Park pulled on her experience working for Y-3 in order to add some unexpected sporty touches to her collection, in the form of roomy coats and cropped, zip-front jackets. What also felt new were the languorously draped jersey pieces.The finale was a magnificent wedding-cake of a dress; a poplin corset top and a voluminous tiered and petaled skirt with an extravagant train. It was inspired, said Park, by Chanel haute couture. As it really does take a village for a mother to be able to balance home and work life, it was Park’s way of saying thank you to both of her families, work and immediate, and give the rest of us something to dream about.
13 September 2022
Ashlyn Park, the Yohji Yamamoto-trained pattern maker who launched her own brand last year, says she’s on a “mission to change the system.” To do so, she’s thinking about sustainability in a way that goes beyond the usual conversations about material choices and “timeless” design to consider how fashion impacts the people who make it, and the importance of perpetuating craft.Park made her last collection entirely by hand by herself; she only recently employed an assistant pattern maker and a sewer. Having seen colleagues sacrifice their personal lives and collapse under the strain of work, Park is determined to make a job in fashion compatible with a humane existence. She says, “if I can manage [the work] really well, following the Yohji Yamamoto system, we can go home at 5:00 PM, even during the crazy season.” This season she put that belief to the test, and met the challenge.The work/life balance that Park achieved in the atelier is present in her clothes, too. Her first two collections spoke to her professional journey from Tokyo to New York City, as well as her processes, which are both wildly romantic and expertly executed. (The Metropolitan Museum acquired Ashlyn’s zero-waste Dylan shirt made from a single piece of fabric.) Her fall offering, dubbed “Identity,” is less ethereal as it’s tied to her own memories of how she lived, and what she wore and loved, in the 1990s. There are uniform-like miniskirts, and smart outerwear with contrast stitching. Pants are cut low, jackets short. References to Japanese fashion from the era are “skin deep” in the sense that the construction has been reconsidered to meet the standards of comfort we want today.Ashlyn is a brand in dialogue with the past. Just as Park respects the craft that has been passed down to her, so too does she celebrate the history of fashion, both in the East and the West. This season, she poured over pictures and drawings of Charles James’s satin puff jacket, and came up with her own versions, one filled, one not. Both feature dramatic heart-like ballooned sleeves, and can be worn like a jacket or hanging from the shoulders like a cape. Similarly extraordinary are two exposed crinoline dresses with shirting bodices that tie with bows in the back.Through her impeccable craft, Park is able to imbue day-to-day pieces like a trench coat, tuxedo jacket, and button-down with a different kind of guilt-free fantasy.
Ashlyn is a made-to-order brand and some pieces are completely waste-free in their make. She even used fabric scraps to create a jazzy lining in one of the “Charles James” jackets. It has an upbeat feeling that mirrors Park’s own. “I think the creator should be really happy because those feelings can be conveyed in the product,” she said. “So to make the wearers happy, I should be happy during the creation.” Evidently she was; this collection wears a beaming smile.th
9 February 2022
It’s a common misconception that designers are responsible for every stitch on a garment: the fabric, the pattern, the silhouette, the finishes—every decision is up to them. In reality, it’s almost always a team effort, with patternmakers, textile developers, sewers, and technical designers all contributing to the final product (and that’s an incomplete list). Insiders know these behind-the-scenes people are often the difference between an item of clothing you’ll cherish for decades and one you’ll send back for a refund. The faultless tailoring of a blazer, the perfect neckline of a bodysuit, the just-right drape of a skirt—those are feats of technical finesse, not radical visions.Still, in the age of Instagram, much of fashion has come to prize bold statements and flash over quality and fit. “Where are theclothes?” a discerning friend and PR exec asked me, lamenting the endless scroll of stuff at a luxury e-tailer. She doesn’t want soulless “essentials,” but she also doesn’t want $800 neon leggings, a $350 dress with a poorly-sewn hem, or a logo’d jacket. Where are the beautifully-made, emotional, yet wearable clothes—the pieces that define your wardrobe, but still genuinely spark joy?Here’s my new answer: They’re in Ashlynn Park’s spring 2022 collection. A former patternmaker and designer for Yohji Yamamoto, Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, and Khaite, Park has the rare combination of fastidious clothes-making skills and a singular, otherworldly aesthetic. She spent two years developing the samples for her debut collectionback in February, unsatisfied until she achieved the perfect fits. Just as impressively, she made every piece herself, from the sketch to the pattern to the runway sample. That level of intimacy no doubt contributed to the collection’s many equilibriums: of simplicity and romance, West and East (Park is from South Korea), precision and ease.Spring 2022 expands on Park’s early signatures of cut-outs, curving seams, and bustles. This season’s bustles—or “dumplings,” as she called them—are filled with fabric scraps from the cutting room floor. They’re also removable and can be layered under any dress or skirt, Ashlyn or otherwise. That spirit of DIY freedom is happily at odds with Park’s perfectionist rigor: She wants people to experiment with her clothes and feel completely unrestrained.
She means that literally and figuratively: Many of her “hybrid pieces” can be taken apart and remixed, while the puffed-up sleeves in look 14 are covertly detached from the blouse to allow greater ease of movement and avoid unsightly bunching. The same sleeves appear on a banker-striped shirt, the sort of classic-but-not item you’d reach for weekly.That office button-downs and red carpet gowns can mingle in the same collection is another testament to Park’s skill and confidence. She pays equal attention to both, but sees her gowns—this time with petal cut-outs at the front, not the back—as the ideal medium to highlight her process. Image 19 in this Sarah Blais-lensed lookbook isn’t really a “look” at all, but a half-body muslin like the ones Park developed as a pattern maker. “Sometimes, I’d only get one or two weeks to develop a pattern,” she explained. “I wanted to show that the perfect piece takes care and time.”
20 September 2021