Draft:Ashish Gupta

Ashish Gupta (born Delhi, 1973), known through his eponymous brand ASHISH and the moniker "king of sequins," is an Indian-born and London-based fashion designer. His designs deploy hand-stitched beading and sequins in a rainbow palette to reimagine common patterns and motifs - tie dye, camouflage, and crochet, to name a few. The fashion press reports on the artistic and cultural inspirations of Gupta's collections, as well as the political nature of many of his designs.

Early life and education
Born in Delhi, India, Ashish Gupta is the son of two doctors. The designer cites contraband copies of American and European fashion magazines as his earliest access to fashion. While attending a strict Irish Catholic boys school as a child, he was bullied and remembers turning to fashion and cinema as a form of escapism.

As a young adult, Gupta studied art and advertising in India. He moved from Delhi to the UK, first earning a bachelor's degree from Middlesex University and then continuing his studies at Central Saint Martins in 1996. There, he received mentorship from course director Louise Wilson and graduated with a master's degree in 2000. That year, he went to Paris in search of jobs, his portfolio was stolen. Without a job lined up, he returned to India to create a ten-garment collection, which included a Harris Tweed design with sequin bows and a kimono-fabric lining that received notice from a magazine editor.

Career
In 2001, after a friend wore one of his designs into Browns Focus boutique in London, buyer Yeda Yun contacted Gupta and became his first buyer. That year, Gupta founded his eponymous label.

The brand ASHISH's first runway show was at London Fashion Week in 2005. As of 2024, his design studio is based in the Hackney neighborhood of East London. He divides his time between the London studio and his workshop in Delhi, India, where he works with a team of 40-50 skilled artisans who make his designs by hand. While other garment workers in India are often paid a daily rate, Gupta's team is compensated with a permanent salary, providing job security and financial stability. His mother oversees the factory. He frames his practices as collaborative, highlighting the Indian artisans, teachers, stylists, and models he works with.

Themes
Early in his career, Gupta avoided being stereotyped as an Indian designer, but later in his career he drew inspiration from South Asian and Indian culture. For example, his Spring 2020 collection featured a Rajasthani mirror-work technique called shisha, while other collections featured traditional block printing, Bandhani-style tie dye, and woven khadi. Dense, metallic zardozi also features in several of his collections. For his Spring 2017 collection, he incorporated elements of Indian traditional dress like saris and lungis and alongside t-shirts and tracksuits, a decision he described by saying, "I wanted to celebrate Indian culture, because it is also such an integral part of British culture." He also cites experiences during his everyday life and while traveling as sources of inspiration.

Gupta engages with stereotypes relating to gender and sexuality in his designs. For the Spring 2016 womenswear runway show, he engaged in gender fluid casting, including two male models who wore glittering designs, high heels, and a peach-toned dress with surface design referring to a naked body. For the Spring 2024 collection, the designer partnered with Irish creator Hazel Gaskin to create photographs of his collection on models and queer creatives, who were cast with diversity of age, race, and gender identity. His sequin-covered designs include garments typically coded masculine, including a lumberjack shirt with a plaid rendered in sequins from 2010 and cargo pants and high-visibility construction vests from Fall 2013.

Accolades
His label won the British Fashion Council NewGen award three times. As of 2014, Gupta had created ten collaborative collections with Topshop. In 2017, he worked with high street brand River Island to create a fifteen-look collection of gender neutral designs. The collection included loungewear, outerwear, and dresses, all marketed to and pictured on masculine, feminine, and androgynous figures.

For the label's tenth anniversary, Gupta mounted a runway show at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 23 October 2015, which was featured as part of the museum's Fashion in Motion Series. The retrospective event featured over thirty looks that the designer selected from over a thousand samples, which were chosen based on the designer's personal attachment to them.

The spring 2019 exhibition "Camp: Notes on Fashion," curated by Andrew Bolton for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, featured two of Gupta's designs. The sequined ensembles included shirts with graphic lettering, one reading "You are much lovelier than you think," and the other "Fall in love and be more tender." The latter was a nod to Susan Sontag's 1964 essay, which also inspired the exhibition.

The William Morris Gallery in London presented the first major survey of Gupta's work, an exhibition titled "Ashish: Fall in Love and Be More Tender." The project was curated by Roisin Inglesby and Joe Scotland and on view from 1 April - 10 September, 2023. It was the first fashion exhibition hosted by the gallery, and in its first week drew over five-thousand visitors. Echoing the designer's inclusive model casting for runway and editorial, the exhibition featured Bonaveri mannequins in a variety of brown and tan shades.

His designs are also included in the permanent collection of the Texas Fashion Collection, which featured his work in the 2021 exhibition "Delight" and a two-part exhibition "Labor of Luxury" in 2024.

Celebrity clients
A slew of celebrities have worn Gupta's designs, including: Beyonce, Debbie Harry, Hunter Schafer, Rhianna, Charlie XCX, Miley Cyrus, Sarah Jessica Parker, Katy Perry, Madonna, Victoria Beckham, Lily Allen, MIA, Patrick Wolff, Kelly Osborne, and Jerry Hall. He also designed outfits for Taylor Swift for the "Red" section of the musician's international Eras Tour in 2024.

Activism
In a 2023 interview, Gupta stated, "Equality has always been part of the world I was imagining." The designer recalls growing up in India under Section 377, a colonial-era law that criminalized homosexuality. He first experienced Pride after moving to England in his twenties. Many of his designs feature rainbow palettes, a nod to the Pride flag.

In 2021, he partnered with the House of Voltaire to release a limited edition calendar featuring Gupta's photography, which center queer desire in the style of a traditional pinup calendar.

For his Fall 2017 collection "The Yellow Brick Road," the designer drew inspiration both from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and an interpretation of the film created by Indian-born author Salman Rushdie, who uses the story to explore ideas of migration and concepts of home. The collection included a t-shirt with the word "Immigrant" on the front, a design informed by the increasing anti-immigrant policies of the British Home Office and that year's Brexit political events.

Other statement shirt phrases included "Love sees no colour," "Unity in adversity," "More glitter less Twitter," and "Proud," among others. In a 2021 interview, Gupta spoke on this use of language: "We live in a polarized world and that language is weaponized now. Part of the reason why I started putting words and phrases on clothes was as a means to make people think."

Personal life
Gupta divides his time between Delhi and London, where he lives in the Queen's Park neighborhood. His home features his collection of homoerotic art, which includes Larry Clark photographs and small works by Louis Fratino.