Ashlyn’s studio is quiet and calm. There’s no music playing; chatter is minimal. Outside, the streets of New York’s Garment District are bustling, even in below-freezing temperatures. But inside, designer Ashlynn Park’s team flits between the two rooms of her studio, the show just three days out. In one room, they’re making adjustments to garments and assessing how looks sit on mannequins; in another, they’re taking inventory of the collection and conducting final fittings. Hair and makeup specialists will arrive for tests later this evening. In the corridor between the two studio spaces, some team members muse over the show’s seating plan.
Park greets us, before rushing out to change from her gray hoodie into an Ashlyn look: a black peplum jacket (the peplum is an Ashlyn signature); a crisp cream button-up (also with a little ruched peplum); and draped black pants. “I have to wear the brand,” she tells me, knowing she’s about to be photographed. Afterward, Park continues to work with the team and adjust garments on the fit model, all while wearing her own design. The clothes are, after all, made to be worked and lived in. That Ashlyn pieces fit so seamlessly and successfully into women’s lives speaks to why Park is navigating more attention this season than she’s used to.
The pressure is on. The designer is fresh off of winning both the CFDA’s Google American Emerging Designer Award and the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund (CVFF) in quick succession last November. “I often say this [industry] is like a game; my studio is my playground,” Park says. “But after I got the award from CFDA, that attention gave me a certain pressure: I asked myself what I can do better, what I can do for the industry.”
This pressure to “do better” influenced the Fall/Winter 2026 collection. “Last season, I wasn’t able to show enough newness because I needed to go through the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund — it was a long process. It’s like seven months, one challenge after another,” she says. This meant the designer was strapped for time when working on the SS26 collection. “So I really pushed myself to show new pieces in this Fall/Winter season.”
If the SS26 collection was about the memories Park carries, hidden in rounded, voluminous garments, FW26 is the story of how she transmits these memories. “We talked about how I poured out that memory and experience into the collection,” she says. This season is a study in control and release; freedom and restraint. The garments feel lighter; still cinched at the waist but flowing more freely. The second dress uses “salvaged” fabric from other garments in the collection, attached neatly at one side, but trailing along the body at the other. Funnel neck jackets, in leather and bouclé, sit atop layered pieces.
It’s also a meditation on the way in which Park works, informed by her South Korean heritage; her time in Japan under Yohji Yamamoto; and her time in the US under Alexander Wang, Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, and now at the helm of her own brand. It’s a unique language, she says. (Ashlyn’s collections are usually rooted in language, writing, and memory — Park never uses a mood board.) “I’m an immigrant, from South Korea to Japan and now here. That migration process shaped me in a unique way,” she says. “The American vernacular is very beautiful — probably more beautiful than other countries — because it’s the melting pot. All different people bring their own journeys, cultures, and senses.”
An efficient practice
Park frequently references her mentors when explaining her own practice, emphasizing how Yamamoto and Simons have influenced her work — and also her clear points of difference. In doing so, she makes clear how, since founding the brand in 2020, she’s evolved these teachings into her own, distinctly Ashlyn codes, which are as pronounced and refined as ever in Thursday’s show.
Park believes in efficiency. To her, this doesn’t simply mean getting things done quickly. It’s about running her business, and creating collections, in a way that produces the highest quality output via a smart use of resources while establishing a design framework for the long run. It’s an approach she learned working under Yamamoto. “They never waste their past,” Park says. New designers have access to past patterns to “tweak or twist”, and create newness. “Here [in the West], they just throw away their current pieces and rebuild with a new creative director or a new designer,” Park says. “Then, after two or three years, they have to leave the studio because they poured out everything they could have.”
Park is determined to operate the Ashlyn brand in a more creatively sustainable way. “We have a sustainable approach, but I’m not talking about how we use recycled fabric or that stuff,” she says. It’s about how Ashlyn saves resources. She beckons a team member to bring over a black and yellow bouclé dress; her favorite from the collection. “This is, like, five hours of work,” Park says, touching the expertly draped fabric. “But on the body, the draping is so beautiful.” Park doesn’t see laboring over a garment for hours as a point of pride — she believes that good work can be done efficiently, with the requisite knowledge and skills, without sacrificing quality.
It’s why the designer is also borrowing from Yohji’s tendency to hire recent graduates. The team is young. “We’re investing time into each member and educating them to adopt Ashlyn designs code and studio attitudes,” she says. Slowly, they’ll build up their skills, and begin to touch the patterns and have more creative opportunities, Park explains.
Still, the repetition of styles and aesthetics doesn’t always garner a positive reaction; in the past, editors have lamented a lack of newness. But Park is strong in her conviction that repetition is what will drive people to understand her brand DNA. It’s an approach she learned from Simons. “We’d create designs from A to Z. But in the end he’d choose just one or two and push that really hard, like a uniform,” she recalls. “So there’s a reason I’m doing this.”
Clothes women want to wear
At brands Park has worked at in the past, the cancellation rate from runway to production was up to 90%, she says. “Most of the runway pieces are just to sell the handbag accessories,” she says. “I think we can do better work, make it to a wearable level and not waste months of effort every [season].” Taped to the wall, the looks are laid out in a grid, some with styling notes scribbled on top. I could imagine wearing each card to the office, or dinner — or both. That’s rare for a runway show.
At Ashlyn, everything presented on the runway can be packed into two suitcases, Park says. It’s a reflection of the clothes’ wearability. “They’re very light, there’s no hard structure underneath,” she says. “We are engineering a sort of secret into the clothing — even though it looks special for the runway, eventually it will make people be very successful and confident themselves because they’re very comfortable.”
She puts her current approach down to a unique mix of Japanese training and operating in a Western market. “On the Western side, finally I was able to touch the body and shape the body using my draping skills,” she says. Park holds up both hands: “On one side is the Yohji flat pattern-making; the other is twisting, draping, celebrating women’s bodies.”
She says she’s used to fashion designers expecting women to adapt their bodies to the clothing, not the other way around. “It’s very opposite, what I’m doing here,” Park says. “I’m showcasing how I design with a Japanese design concept, and twisting it and slashing it and adding an unexpected silhouette. That’s the newness. That’s the uniqueness.”
Staying the course
Practicality — in business practice and the clothing itself — can’t solve for everything, nor can it underpin everything. Park acknowledges that putting on a show in the current context is hard, and that operating a brand is even harder.
Ashlyn is stocked at Bergdorf Goodman, which means the brand wasn’t immune from Saks Global’s financial struggles and subsequent bankruptcy. “It reminded me how risky the game is,” Park says. “It made me sit on the edge of my chair and reassess my financial structure. It was worthwhile to see the numbers very clearly and then reset myself for 2026,” she says. “I didn’t have a nice end of the year, but we need to survive.”
Conscious of the industry support she’s received in the wake of her CFDA and CVFF wins, Park is intent on putting on a strong show this season. Sometimes, she regrets committing to do so; for investing the amount of money she has. But it’s worth it, she says. “The work I’m doing here is to make a history; I want to leave my traces by the season,” says Park. It’s a historical record of sorts.
Park aspires to continue to level up in newness and uniqueness as she builds out the Ashlyn brand, while remaining true to the language she’s cultivated over the last five years. As for her end goal, she’s still figuring that out. “Maybe the goal would be to end the game,” Park says with a smile. “But I’m still enjoying the game.”
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