The pile of sequins scattered haphazardly atop a bench caught Ashish Gupta’s eye as he and his team were in the studio doing research: “I thought they just looked beautiful,” the designer said. So, he thought, why try and impose order when disorder looks so great? Thus this Ashish collection memorably preambled with a group of girls who skated the runway variously wearing DIY-touched tracksuits, a slip skirt, a frayed and washed denim T-shirt, and lairy-fairy dresses wreathed in tulle. Like nigh on every look in his Spring 2016, theirs were speckled and heaped with Ashish’s random-on-purpose drifts of candy-tone sparkle. They also emanated a pleasing Larry Clark–ish truculence—attitude, basically.
Then the show-run started in earnest with another ka-boom. On the left was Larry B, the London DJ; on the right was Jay Boogie; the man in Look 2 is Maximillian. The crowd whooped even harder. When they got to the end of the runway, they initiated what became another walk-the-floor flourish that ran through the show by tossing handfuls of sequins at the crowd. Later Larry came out again in a spaghetti-strap slip illustrated with some pertinent details. Ashish explained: “I always want my shows to be a celebration of subcultures. And I felt that Larry’s dress was an important statement in the context of Caitlyn Jenner, but also racial issues, too.”
This was a show in which the overwhelming message was its rejection of categories through inclusion: Because we’re all just little sparkles, jumbled together. There were some striking outfits in here, too—the one-piece hybrids of sari and jeans, most lovably—but that message was the thing.
