In London, A Sai Ta makes vibrantly colorful, innovative women’s wear that explores his mixed heritage.
A model wears an Americana kimono from the Asai spring 2019 collection.CreditCreditJamie Stoker
By Grace Cook
“It’s organized chaos in here,” says the British-Vietnamese designer A Sai Ta, standing in the middle of his tiny north London studio. Among the stacks of overstuffed plastic boxes exploding with garments — skimpy transparent neon tops, a pair of American-flag-patterned pants, scarlet sweaters trimmed with fraying fringe — some eight provisional assistants are busy helping Ta put the finishing touches on his spring 2019 collection. Ta, 30, runs his studio alone, and so his friends have stepped in to help ensure everything gets finished: One volunteer hems tie-dyed fluorescent orange ribbon belts, another carefully glues plumes of sugar-pink and lime-green ostrich feathers to a pair of minimalist ’90s-era strappy sandals.
It’s five days before the show, which took place last Sunday, and Ta is feeling calm. “This is the most prepared I have ever been,” he says, gesturing to the packed garment rack on which the finished pieces hang. Ta studied women’s wear design at Central Saint Martins and finessed his skills while interning at the Row. Later, he helped develop fabrics for Kanye West’s Yeezy line after being handpicked by West during the rapper’s 2015 visit to Saint Martins. The impending show will be Ta’s fourth since he launched his own label, Asai, in 2017, and also his fourth with Fashion East, the London nonprofit initiative that gives support and runway space to emerging British designers.
Fashion was a natural path for Ta, who grew up in England after his parents fled Vietnam in 1979. His mother worked as a seamstress, and as a child in southeast London, he would help her fix the stitching on the garments she would bring home from work after school. He started to sketch at an early age and would “play with the draping of the towels after the bath to make dresses,” says Ta, now known for his innovative approach to textiles. From a pile of finished samples in his studio, he picks up a sculptural baby-blue skirt made from an undulating knit punctuated with small holes. It’s the product of a new technique he’s developed, in which a piece is woven with a hemming machine in a single sitting. The foot pressure on the machine’s pedal determines the shape (think potter’s wheel), and the garment emerges fully formed, without seams. “Each one is totally unique,” says Ta.
His four older sisters’ clubbing phase is also a reference point that permeates his collections, evident in his use of nuclear hues: sunshine yellows, fluorescent pinks and fiery oranges. In Ta’s early collections, the Asai woman wore mostly bright, slinky patchwork dresses, but recently he’s introduced a more structured silhouette, too, with tailoring in vibrant prints. “By adding all of these elements into my designs, it gives me the license to experiment and stops me falling into the trap of being known for one thing,” he says.
Friends and volunteers put the finishing touches on the spring 2019 collection in Ta’s north London studio.CreditJamie Stoker
When a fit model arrives, the designer, dressed in baggy trousers and an oversized white T-shirt worn purposefully inside out, springs into action. “This is an American cowboy shirt, but it has the sleeves and silhouette of a kimono,” he says of the piece he selects for the model, as he wraps a fabric belt around her waist. The collection also includes military-style garments, such as trench coats and bomber jackets, that have been turned into draped, off-the-shoulder styles reminiscent of Buddhist monks’ robes — an allusion to the Vietnam War. (Ta visited his parents’ country of origin for the first time over the summer.) Many of the garments are embroidered or printed with “things that symbolize transformation and change, like butterflies and waves,” and the collection contrasts strict tailoring with softer, free-flowing silhouettes. “It’s showing something beautiful within a war story,” he says.
While Ta describes his aesthetic as “urban, ’90s and a bit grunge,” it is his use of Asian iconography — Vietnamese dragon motifs, lotus flowers and chinoiserie prints — that forms the connecting thread between his various collections. “The end goal is to show the similarities between cultures, not highlight our differences,” says Ta, who refers to the Ming vase patterns he often uses as being synonymous with both China and British teacups. But he also loves a winking flourish that gently sends up Western associations of Asian culture while celebrating his roots: His show notes are printed on papers that mimic noodle-bar menus; orders from his online store arrive packaged in polystyrene takeout boxes; and he named his label’s most popular style — a sheer, acid-washed turtleneck in multicolor tie-dye — the Hot Wok Top. The designer says, laughing, “My clothes just make people feel spicy.”
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