For A Sai Ta, the founder of cool-girl-brand ASAI — beloved for its asymmetrical tie-dye dresses, Hot Wok tops, and colourful pieces packaged in takeaway noodle containers — clothes should inspire an emotional connection, and help people explore new realities and fantasies. Since his childhood, Ta has used them to escape his immediate surroundings (the social housing where he lived with his seven siblings and single mother, who had fled Vietnam during the war to a refugee camp in Hong Kong before settling in the UK), and to access a world, otherwise out of his reach. “At a young age being Asian in London, you are confronted with people’s reactions to your difference and your class. I couldn’t understand and accept being poor, being different to everyone else. So I used the power of fashion to be seen.”
At secondary school, he began customising his own clothes, reconstructing hand-me-downs from his siblings, patchworking and using fabric pens to draw graphics onto t-shirts to achieve the pieces he wanted. When he was old enough to have a job, he worked in retail at the weekends, saving up enough money to buy designer items: “Big brand names,” he says, “asserted a sense of power behind a mirror of projected wealth. Having these name brands provided security and gave me the drive to live beyond my means.” Ta still owns and cherishes these clothes that retain “the memory of experience and feeling of their time.”
Infinitely curious about the emotional response that clothing can trigger, Ta has since created a brand that intends, above all, to channel a mood — to help women fully express themselves and become a part of a woman’s character. They’re “classy, bootee and ratchet,” he says, “a mix of everything I embody, represent and desire.” Also, inspired by the women in his life: Ta’s wife Joni, who works in the arts and is a bold thinker with a thirst for knowledge that he admires; as well as his sisters and mother, who raised the family on her own. “I was and still am intrigued at the duality of the roles [my mother] played as a caregiver. A strength and vulnerability that I recognised, serves to inspire my creative process now.” The multiple forms of nurturing women at home, Ta says, has “inspired my view of femininity and the strength it holds.”
It’s the reason ASAI has become such a cult classic since it emerged in 2017. Worn by the likes of Rihanna who, prior to her announcement that Fenty’s first collaboration would be with the young British designer, nearly broke the internet with a slo-mo video walking beside a pool in October wearing ASAI’s hot pink Hot Wok dress. It now has more than 24 million views. Numerous retailers pleaded with him to put the dress into production after the viral video, but he refused to capitalise on the power of an influencer. He’s since changed his tune but for a good cause, currently selling the asymmetric tie-dye design to raise money for Black Lives Matter, The Voice of Domestic Workers and Solace Women’s Aid.
Ta’s interest in art and creativity was nurtured by his oldest sister, who took him to the Tate and charity shops when he was younger, and seeing is interest in fabric and construction bought him his first sewing machine and mannequin. His mother, who was a seamstress, would bring home clothes to sew that he would watch her unpick. In 2009, he attended Central Saint Martins, where he met an international class that helped him confirm his style and identity — processing his own family’s ancestral trauma as a second generation refugee.
The clothes look to the beauty of the nature seen on his travels across Asia, and the layers and crowded spaces in Hong Kong. As such, the clothes he makes are bold and fantastical but also easy to wear — layering pieces that become like a second skin in vibrant technicolour, which make the wearer feel seen. They appeal to women of all shapes and sizes, ASAI reflecting the women in Ta’s life: all strong, diverse and unique. “It is such an exciting time in fashion,” he adds. “It is not just for the elite and can be accessed at many levels.”
Editor
Emma Russell
