RUNWAY TO RUNWAY

Mohammed Ashi, Founder and Creative Director of Ashi Studio, was propelled onto the global stage of haute couture in Paris after joining fashion’s governing body last year. Saudi Arabia’s first big-name designer is now taking his designs even higher, to the open skies.

- SAMAR KHOURI

On June 27, 2024, the founder and creative director of Ashi Studio returned to the city’s runway with his fall-winter 2024 couture show, which he describes as his biggest, and most expressive couture collection yet. “I’m known for my architectural, probably for my artistic approach. I’m kind of pushing that to another boundary a little bit just to express more,” he explains. “It’s a good time right now in Paris to push the boundary a little bit and to show a different approach to couture from a Middle Eastern point of view, just to kind of break that narrative a little bit from what is expected from us.”

Ashi explored the “movement in-between worlds” in his fall-winter 2024 collection, entitled Sculpted Clouds, with 28 hyper-sculpted looks and silhouettes in monochrome palettes, leaning towards cocooning and reverie. In attendance were actors Michelle Williams, Sadie Sink, and Tom Hollander, as well as Mohammed Al Turki, CEO of the Red Sea Film Foundation, and Jomana Alrashid, CEO of SRMG.

At the Hotel de la Monnaie that same evening, the Paris-based couturier unveiled designs that will soon be floating down a different kind of runway. In May 2024, Riyadh Air tapped the Saudi couturier to design and create the airline’s first cabin crew fashion line ahead of its maiden flight in 2025. “Other designers before me like Balenciaga, Dior, and Pierre Cardin have kind of taken that route as well. I took it from that perspective. It’s a project that has been going on for almost a year and a half,” he reveals. The Saudi airline, owned by Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, is expected to add $20 billion to the kingdom’s non-oil GDP growth and generate over 200,000 direct and indirect domestic jobs.