Draft:Ashish Gupta

Ashish Gupta (born Dehli, 1973), known through his eponymous brand ASHISH, is an Indian-born and London-based fashion designer often called the “king of sequins.” Known for his rainbow palette and joyful approach to fashion, his designs often deploy hand-stitched beading and sequins to reimagine common patterns and motifs - tie dye, camouflage, and crochet, to name a few. An advocate for social justice, the designer is known for inclusive model casting, serving as an outspoken advocate for diversity, and using his designs to explore the politics of optimism and inclusion in fashion.

Early life and education

Born in Delhi, India, Ashish is the son of two doctors. The designer cites contraband copies of American and European fashion magazines as his earliest access to fashion. While attending a strict Irish Catholic boys school as a child, he was bullied and remembers turning to fashion and cinema as a form of escapism.

As a young adult, he studied art and advertising in India. Ashish moved from Dehli to the UK, first earning a bachelor’s degree from Middlesex University and then going on to study at Central Saint Martins in 1996. There, he received encouragement from course director Louise Wilson and graduated with a master’s degree in 2000. That year, he went to Paris in search of jobs, his portfolio was stolen.  Without a job lined up, he returned to India to create a ten-garment collection, which included a Harris Tweed design with sequin bows and a kimono-fabric lining that received notice from a magazine editor.

Career

In 2001, after a friend wore one of his designs into Browns Focus boutique in London, buyer Yeda Yun contacted Ashish and became his first buyer. That year, Ashish founded his eponymous label.

The brand ASHISH’s first runway show was at London Fashion Week in 2005.

As of 2024, his design studio is based in the Hackney neighborhood of East London, and he frequently spends time in his workshop in Delhi, India, where he works with a team of 40-50 skilled artisans who make his designs by hand. While other garment workers are often paid a daily rate, Ashish’s team is compensated with a permanent salary, ensuring their job security and some financial stability. His mother oversees the factory. He also frames his practices as collaborative, highlighting the Indian artisans, teachers, stylists, and models he works with.

Themes

Though in interviews Ashish often mentions early efforts to avoid being stereotyped as an Indian designer, later in his career he drew clear Inspiration from South Asian and Indian culture. For example, his Spring 2020 collection featured a Rajasthani mirror-work technique called shisha, while other collections featured traditional block printing, Bandhani-style tie dye, and woven khadi cloth. Dense, metallic zardozi also features in several of his collections. For his Spring 2017 collection, he incorporated elements of Indian traditional dress like saris and lungis and alongside t-shirts and tracksuits, a decision he described by saying, “I wanted to celebrate Indian culture, because it is also such an integral part of British culture.” While his cultural identities shape his work, he is known for drawing inspiration from experiences during his everyday life and while traveling.

Ashish also challenges gender binaries through his designs, subverting narrow ideas about how heterosexuality and masculinity are fashioned. For the Spring 2016 womenswear runway show, he engaged in gender fluid casting, including two male models who wore glittering designs, high heels, and a peach-toned dress with surface design referring to a naked body. For the Spring 2024 collection, the designer partnered with Irish creator Hazel Gaskin to create glamorous-yet-real images of the dream-like collection on models and queer creatives cast across age, race, and gender identity. His designs continue this trend of expanding the gender associations in fashion, including a frequently cited lumberjack shirt rendered in sequins from 2010 and cargo pants and high-visibility construction vests from Fall 2013.

Accolades

His label has won the prestigious Topshop-sponsored British Fashion Council NewGen award three times. As of 2014, Ashish had created ten collaborative collections with Topshop. The collection that launched on 29 May 2014, called “Beach, Please,” was inspired by European hotels and included a range of accessories.

In 2017, he worked with high street brand River Island to create a fifteen-look collection of gender neutral designs. The collection included loungewear, outerwear, and dresses, all marketed to and pictured on masculine, feminine, and androgynous figures.

Ashish’s work has frequently been included in major cultural institutions and museums. Celebrating his label’s tenth anniversary, the designer mounted a runway show at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 23 October 2015, which was featured as part of their Fashion in Motion Series. The retrospective event featured over thirty looks that the designer selected from over a thousand samples, which were primarily chosen based on the designer’s personal attachment to them.

Two of Ashish’s designs were featured in the spring 2019 exhibition “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” curated by Andrew Bolton for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two sequined ensembles included shirts with graphic lettering, one reading “You are much lovelier than you think,” and the other “Fall in love and be more tender.” The latter was a nod to Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay that also inspired the exhibition.

The William Morris Gallery in London presented the first major survey of Ashish’s work, an exhibition titled “Ashish: Fall in Love and Be More Tender, which was curated by Roisin Inglesby and Joe Scotland and on view from 1 April - 10 September, 2023. It was the first fashion exhibition ever hosted by the gallery, and in its first week drew over five-thousand visitors. Echoing the designer’s inclusive model casting for runway and editorial, the exhibition featured Bonaveri mannequins in a variety of browns and tans.

His designs are also included in the permanent collection of the Texas Fashion Collection, which featured his work in the 2021 exhibition “Delight” and a two-part exhibition “Labor of Luxury” in 2024.

Celebrity clients

A slew of celebrities have worn Ashish’s designs, including: Beyonce, Debbie Harry, Hunter Schafer, Rhianna, Charlie XCX, Miley Cyrus, Sarah Jessica Parker, Katy Perry, Madonna, Victoria Beckham, Lily Allen, MIA, Patrick Wolff, Kelly Osborne, and Jerry Hall. Ashish also designed outfits for Taylor Swift for the “Red” section of the musician’s international Eras Tour in 2024.

Activism

In a 2023 interview, Ashish stated, “Equality has always been part of the world I was imagining.” The designer recalls growing up in India under Section 377, a colonial-era law that criminalized homosexuality. He first experienced Pride after moving to England in his twenties. Many of his designs feature rainbow palettes, a nod to the Pride flag.

In 2021, he partnered with the House of Voltaire to release a limited edition calendar featuring Ashish’s photography, which center queer desire in the style of a traditional pinup calendar.

For his Fall 2017 collection “The Yellow Brick Road,” the designer drew inspiration both from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and an interpretation of the film created by Indian-born author Salman Rushdie, who uses the story to explore ideas of migration and concepts of home. The collection included a t-shirt with the word “Immigrant” on the front, a design informed by the increasing anti-immigrant policies of the British Home Office and that year’s Brexit political events.

Other statement shirt phrases included “Love sees no colour,” “Unity in adversity,” “More glitter less Twitter,” and “Proud,” among others. In a 2021 interview, Ashish spoke on this use of language: “We live in a polarized world and that language is weaponized now. Part of the reason why I started putting words and phrases on clothes was as a means to make people think.”

Personal life

Ashish divides his time between Dehli and London, where he lives in the Queen’s Park neighborhood. His home features his collection of homoerotic art, which includes Larry Clark photographs and small works by Louis Fratino.