This turn in the conversation is as unexpected as a robot suddenly
gaining sentience, but the detour comes about because we’re talking
about the fall 2019 collection for her line, Ambush. The clothes have a
futurist-meets-survivalist bent—ripstop nylon, quilted vests, cargo pants,
carabiner clips worn as earrings—kind of like the outfit you’d wear to go
on a hike in 2035. The initial concept came from a viewing of the David
Bowie film The Man Who Fell to Earth, which she understatedly describes
as “a weird movie.” The conceit is that Bowie, perfectly cast as an alien,
comes to Earth when his planet runs out of water. “But he ends up getting
involved in earthly bad things, like alcohol and sex and drugs, so he never
goes back,” she summarizes. For Ahn, a collection often starts with this
kind of pop culture–assisted push. Some designers, she says, “physically
go to places to get inspired. I wish I could do that, but I don’t really have
the time, so when I get obsessed with certain artists or certain movies, I
try to draw ideas from those places. Also, I’m a city girl, so I look at those
things as my mental escape.”
In fact, the Korean-born Ahn calls two cities home, splitting her time
between Tokyo and Paris, where she works as the design director of jew-
elry for Dior Men. Despite the fact that she’s sidewalk-bound, she has an
affinity for nature, perhaps because she spent part of her formative years
in the Pacific Northwest (she relocated to Tokyo in 2003). She thinks a lot
about the fate of the planet. The movie also got her thinking about artificial
intelligence and outer space, prompting her to wonder, “Where are we
heading? How are we communicating with people?”
This train of thought accelerated last year when she took in “Scary
Beauty,” an “android opera” by the composer Keiichiro Shibuya, featur-
ing an AI conductor and a human orchestra. “The humanoid was not
programmed to lead them to make perfect music,” she says. “They built
that humanoid to react to the human sounds and then kind of naturally
direct them. So you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. And when I was
watching that, I was blown away.”
These might seem like ideas far outside the realm of fashion. Yet this
same kind of interaction—technology mingling with nature in an impro-
vised way, to unexpected effect—could describe Ahn’s preferred style of
creation. Ambush began as an ad lib of sorts. Her husband, the rapper
(and now entertainment executive) Verbal, who’s also of Korean descent,
needed to look cool onstage. “We had issues with stylists bringing in stuff
that wasn’t really him or what he liked,” so the two decided, “Let’s just
do it ourselves.” With no formal design training (Ahn was then working
as a graphic designer), they began making jewelry in collaboration with
designer friends and started giving pieces to other friends, one of whom
was Kanye West. From there, “it just kind of spread naturally,” abetted by
the Tokyo club scene, Ahn says. This was pre-Instagram, when “you had
to go to those places to flaunt your outfits. I learned the art of peacocking,”
she says. Ahn’s personal style, which is bleeding-edge cool—platinum hair
with a moat of intentional roots, colorful swaths of makeup (Fenty Beauty
is one of her go-tos), weapon-like nails, and tons of jewelry—informed
the overall look. Eventually, they added ready-to-wear to the line, and
Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé started sporting their wares. Ambush
has a Converse collaboration coming out this month; other recent linkups
include Nike and Gentle Monster.
Ahn describes her work at Dior as “respecting [Dior Homme ar-
tistic director] Kim [Jones]’s direction, and then also keeping, and re-
creating, the code of the house: ‘How can I create something new, so
that we can bring fresh air and energy?’” Whereas with Ambush, “we’re
building it still. For me, it’s more important to try different things, to see
what’s ‘us.’”
The line is often described as streetwear, but she finds that term to be
“a bit overused. When people look at something casual, they just call it
streetwear,” she says. “I think that’s quite misleading, because streetwear
first came from the culture and from the streets. There’s an identity to it, so
I don’t want people to look at something that we produced as something
casual and think, ‘Casual equals streetwear.’”
There may be another reason she pushes back against the term: She
seems to have a temperamental aversion to being categorized. That un-
predictability comes out again when the conversation turns to music, and
she starts talking about white noise. “Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot
of nature sounds,” she says. “On YouTube, there are so many six- to eight-
hour mixes of people recording in the rain forest, on the beach. Someone
did it on an airplane. For some reason, I find it kind of interesting.”
I suggest that, perhaps, the nature sounds are a throwback to her up-
bringing in the Pacific Northwest, the rugged terrain that has shaped her
design identity as well. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s subconscious,” she
allows. “I want to be in nature but I can’t, so I’m drawn to these things.”CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
LEFT: AHN WITH KATE
MOSS, LENNY KRAVITZ,
AND NAOMI CAMPBELL
AT THE DIOR HOMME
SPRING 2019 SHOW; IN
A RECENT PORTRAIT;
FRONT ROW AT DIOR
HOMME PREFALL
2019 WITH HUSBAND
VERBAL (CENTER).MOSS, KRAVITZ, CAMPBELL, AND AHN: BERTRAND RINDOFF/GETTY IMAGES; AHN: HIROSHI MANAKA; HIROYUKI IGARASHI, VERBAL, AND AHN: SATOMI KOKUBUN/SHUTTERSTOCK.60