What do Louise Bourgeois, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Jack the Ripper, and a smattering of famous rooms in France’s royal châteaux have in common? More than one might suspect, as it turns out.
Before a show held in grand Haussmannian salons whose moldings, parquets, and presumably gilded past had been covered in immaculate white, Mohammed Ashi explained that this collection was the result of “chaos that somehow led to a layering of ideas.”
Despite his sunny persona, Ashi admits he often broods over the darker side of human nature. “I express myself best through darkness,” he said. “I gravitate to that. It expresses more.” Reading Patrick Süskind’s Perfume naturally led to musings about London’s most notorious serial killer, making corsetry a logical next step—also materials rent asunder, distressed, worn to death, and then repurposed. Or ribbons, velvet, decorative brass branches, antique lace, and exotic species, all of which reward the patient eye at the French capital’s famed flea markets. (That Ashi’s previous lingerie-centric collection was inspired by the infamous Madame Claude offered some measure of continuity.)
Relying on hourglass silhouettes and a fully loaded arsenal of artisanal savoir faire, the designer sent out pieces so ornately worked they might one day merit a catalogue raisonné of their own. It all started relatively simply, with a black horsehair bustier skirt (an oblique nod to old-world carriages, he noted), but the embellishments grew progressively more intricate from there. Croc beading slithered down a chocolate dress. A dress in pale yellow latex was worked like an exotic skin, skimming over built-out hips—of late, designers are reinstating curves lost to semaglutides—and descending into a very tight translucent skirt.
A showpiece of a fully sequined evening coat reprised the chinoiserie in the Grande Singerie room at the Château de Chantilly. A molded plexiglass bustier fully covered in mother-of-pearl curved over a long skirt in pink satin, while two of those monkeys lifted from Chantilly perched on another with a woodlike finish. For a lace ensemble, the Ashi Studio made an identical replica of an antique-flea-market find then treated it to appear aged. Feathers from Lemarié were hand-curled to bring relief to a long satin dress, shown here with a bralette. Decor details gleaned from various châteaux up and down the Loire Valley were reprised using the zardozi technique, as on a gold bustier dress, or on long, fully sequined gowns. For the staging, the designer lifted a page from the golden era of couture: A musical score was mixed with a composition of his own, and he used his voice to narrate but rendered it more feminine with an assist from AI.
In his collection notes, Ashi evoked “a desire to mystify, to keep reaching for something more…a more exacting form of craft.” Now that the designer has proven amply that he creates couture that flirts with the notion of high art, it would be nice to see him explore more day options and notably ones that let his modern-day Venus de Milos do more than stand there and look beautiful—like, for example, sit down.
