TAE ASHIDA
The Japanese fashion designer is carrying on her father’s legacy while forging her own
Bearing the family name Ashida is not easy but Japanese fashion designer, Tae Ashida consistently rises to the challenge. Her father, Jun Ashida (pictured below), was one of Japan’s most respected fashion designers, serving as personal designer to Empress Michiko, and designing for royalty, sports teams and national brands. After his death, Ashida took the reins of her father’s eponymous brand as creative director while helming her own Tae Ashida line.
While continuing her father’s legacy, Ashida also reinterprets the brand in line with her own style, and continues to forge her own path, celebrating her 30th anniversary as a designer this year. She presented the springsummer 2022 collection in an unprecedented way at Tokyo Fashion Week 2021, combining state-of-the-art volumetric video technology with the brand’s traditional approach, rooted in elegance and practicality.
What are some of the things you learnt from your father? Did he give you any advice?
I learnt everything from him, of course, but I also refuse to follow his advice when I create. Design is personal so I try to find my own way of creating.
Coming from a fashion family, did you know that you would one day work in the industry?
I always knew, but I don’t remember when I decided to become a fashion designer. I was so young but this situation [of having family members working in the industry] eventually made me become a fashion designer. It’s kind of strange that everybody thought that I’d be a fashion designer in the future—everyone around me, like my friends and teachers and, of course, my parents, knew.
Tell us more about the theme for Jun Ashida’s springsummer 2022 collection for Tokyo Fashion Week 2021. We had a chance to collaborate with Canon and IBM, so we filmed our collection using this advanced video technology, [becoming] the first brand to use it in a fashion presentation. Jun Ashida is an idealistic brand, so we wanted to show what we can do with this kind of technology, being the fashion brand with the longest history in Japan.
For spring-summer 2022, I took inspiration from my father’s archive designs. This was to prove that our traditional values are still important even if there’s a new and innovative technology that takes over. We wanted to show that the quality of our creations still matters in this very hightech world.
This new collection features modern up-to-date pieces while maintaining the legacy of the brand. How do you strike that balance?
Our fashion line has always had this theme of elegance and practicality. And that was my father’s lifetime mission for his creations, so we have to keep that. I think given that kind of mission, we can keep our style but at the same time, change things according to the current situation and time. But even when the style changes, we’ll always keep that mission.
This year also marks the 30th anniversary of your professional debut. Looking back, how much do you think you’ve changed as a designer? My designs change as the world changes. I think that’s what most fashion designers are like—changing all the time. Some people say that the Jun Ashida line is not the Jun Ashida they know, but I always tell them that my father was very ahead of his time. If he was still alive and designing, he would have changed his style, too, since he was more innovative. So, I change my style according to what’s in the air. I think that’s a very important element of what fashion designers should be like.