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 of The Nutcracker rang 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.
