If you’ve been keeping your ear firmly fixed on the rumblings of the fashion underground, chances are you’ve heard of ASAI. Only a mere four seasons in, the eponymous brand – founded by A Sai Ta – has become renowned for its iconoclastic ability to juxtapose just about anything – be it fabrics, colours, textures or cultures.
ASAI’s SS19 collection was no different in this sense from what had gone before. Throughout the collection, there was the strong presence of Ta’s Chinese-Vietnamese heritage and the attempt to strike a balance between the scruples and demands of the East and the West. However, if his previous collections focused on questioning and scrutinising the notion of what it is to be ‘Asian’, this collection swerved away from familiar territory and seemed evoke a sense of peaceful acceptance and celebration of the mish-mash of cultures that make up Ta’s background.
The Vietnamese and Chinese elements throughout the collection were overt, with the SS19 offering hailing the return of the covetable nunchuk handbags, as well as re-worked, curve-hugging ‘hot wok’ tops. There were clunky Ming vase-inspired belts and ankle chains, with the penultimate look of the collection riffing off the Ming Dynasty theme completely, culminating in an enchanting, sheer sequined body suit adorned with raging dragons and swirling clouds to boot. Deconstructed Vietnamese ao dai collars and plays on traditional dress in the form of a luxe beige suit and an explosive watercolour ensemble were also afoot and sprinkled lightly throughout Ta’s offering.
However, the aspirations of the collection did not solely revolve around the reclamation of Asian symbols and motifs that have been plundered by Western civilisations and abused and exoticized beyond recognition; but, it also managed to deploy these cultural emblems in perfect harmony with Western elements to produce an indisputably original collection.
A potential reflection of the multi-faceted heritage of Ta himself, the SS19 offering displayed the perfect fusion of an East-Meets-West aesthetic that wasn’t in conflict or clichéd in any way – take the ingenious cowboy boot cuffs that were effortlessly assimilated into sheer pant legs, for example, or the aforementioned nunchuk handbags. It was a playful approach to the issue of identity and race that was also reflected in the colours and fabric that ASAI displayed. The collection served up endless amounts of translucent fabrics with clashing kaleidoscopic tie-dye effects sourced from all over the colour spectrum, ranging from toxic yellows and acidic oranges all the way over to biohazardous greens and florescent flamingo pinks. There were also teasing flashes of flesh pattered throughout that further enhanced the DIY nature of the collection, with saucy thigh grazing slits and more abstract geometrical cut-outs both featuring heavily.
What ASAI managed to do yesterday was to take the familiar and the safe and twist them into something extreme, whilst simultaneously keeping the SS19 offering light-hearted and vibrant. The brand took ostensibly juxtaposing elements of vastly disparate cultures and fused them all together into a strikingly playful collection of garments that not only created a brand new dialogue surrounding the notions of ‘appropriation’ and cultural ownership, but also gave the audience a brand-new way at looking at age-old cultural artefacts
