Designer Ashlynn Park is Bringing Craftsmanship Back, One Stitch at a Time

Usually, it would be bad form to send a piece of clothing down the runway unfinished. But the process of designing a piece of clothing isn’t fully revealed just from looking at the finished form. Sometimes, it takes stripping things down to their most basic to showcase exactly what makes something special.

And that’s exactly what Ashlynn Park, founder and creative director of Ashlyn, decided to do for her Fall/Winter 2023 presentation. In Cristina Grajales Gallery, on the border of SoHo and Tribeca in New York, Park made the unusual choice to become part of her own show, creating a toile for one of the collection’s skirts. The live demonstration, with Park skillfully wielding scissors in front of an audience, may be a nightmare for some designers (who can be notoriously shy), but for Park, it was a chance to show off the level of craftsmanship that bolsters each of her creations.

“Ashlyn is about my design process and pattern-making skills,” she says. “What better way to highlight this than by creating something live in front of the audience to show how I design?”

Park’s clothing is both sharply tailored and softly romantic. She is able to marry meticulous attention to detail with delicate draping, finding ways to take traditional wardrobe staples—a little black dress or a leather jacket—and reinvent them. Pieces hug the body and feature plunging necklines and high slits, but, with Park drawing inspiration from 16th-century fashion or her childhood school uniforms, her pieces are more idiosyncratic than your usual ready-to-wear.

Take the Dillan dress, which can be worn with long or short sleeves, and is cut from a single piece of fabric, resulting in zero waste. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased the first iteration of the design, which debuted in Fall/Winter 2021, to become part of its permanent collection.

“I wanted Ashlyn to be recognized for its mastery of modern tailoring and pattern design, uncompromising quality, and a studio philosophy that counters waste due to the industry’s tendency toward overproduction and a consumer pattern of overconsumption.” Though Park may not yet be a household name, the recognition is quietly swelling; in 2022, the designer was a finalist for the prestigious LVMH Prize. 

Park spent two years crafting her first collection, which debuted in February 2021. She began by perfecting a single jacket, and then another, and another, methodically working her way through until she had developed a full range of bustled dresses and backward blazers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she explains, “having this focused time spent at home allowed me to create the collection.”

Though it’s not unusual today for creative directors to be largely removed from the actual execution of their designs, Park’s work has always been rooted in the construction itself. It wasn’t until last year that Park expanded her team of one to include an assistant pattern maker and sewer. Her first collections were researched, designed, executed, and marketed solo. 

Park’s background is one built around the technical side of fashion. Her attention to detail and interest in shape stems from her undergraduate time at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Though she initially majored in architecture, her hand sketching caught the eye of a professor, who motivated her to change her major to fashion design. She then earned her master’s in fashion design from Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo and began her career working for Yohji Yamamoto. 

It was under Yamamoto that Park began to develop her signature aesthetic, working her way up through sewing, patterns, and, eventually, design. She’s acute in her attention to detail, perfecting the interior construction of every garment, knowing that how it’s built on the inside is what makes it so remarkable to the eye.

Park explains that Yamamoto also helped instill a sense of responsibility as a designer, which has led to her use of deadstock fabrics and forays into zero-waste creations. “He fostered a sense of pride and commitment to quality that counters overproduction and overconsumption.”

In 2011, she left Tokyo for New York, where she worked as a pattern maker for Alexander Wang, producing custom pieces for Beyoncé and Rihanna, followed by a stint at Nili Lotan, and then at Calvin Klein under Raf Simons. “I have always had a competitive spirit and push myself continually,” she says.

And so, in 2019 Park launched Ashlyn, marrying tailoring reminiscent of Midtown Manhattan corporate dressers and more dramatic draping, a melding of Eastern and Western aesthetics. “I think this is part of my aesthetic sensibility,” she says. “Finding the right balance is something that is intuitive to me.”