London born and based designer A Sai Ta launched his label Asai with Fashion East in February 2017. After graduating from his BA at Central Saint Martins, he gained experience at The Row – and was headhunted for a position at Kanye West’s Yeezy a year into his MA.  However, the designer didn’t end on resting on laurels, and continues his own path in London. Today, he presented his first solo fashion show, and it was pure brilliance. Asai takes the familiar, and reimagines it iconoclastically by entering into nuances of his British-Chinese-Vietnamese cultural heritage as a second generation Londoner. Taking the craftsman’s spirit from his parents – a seamstress mother and a carpenter father – ASAI often employs surface decoration and fabric manipulation to create intricate textiles, which mirrors the designer’s appeal to disrupt familiar visual codes. For autumn-winter 2019, the designer went into something more cozy, even highland-ish. Ecru knits, beige puffer coats, brown, ruffled maxi-dresses, flurry slip-ons and fleecy crown-beanies felt like ready for high altitudes. The patchwork looks were insanely good, just the label’s already-cult Hot Wok Top, this time around kept in an earthy colour palette.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.