Ashlyn’s studio is quiet and calm. There’s no music playing; chatter is minimal. Outside, the streets of New York’s Garment District are bustling, even in below-freezing temperatures. But inside, designer Ashlynn Park’s team flits between the two rooms of her studio, the show just three days out. In one room, they’re making adjustments to garments and assessing how looks sit on mannequins; in another, they’re taking inventory of the collection and conducting final fittings. Hair and makeup specialists will arrive for tests later this evening. In the corridor between the two studio spaces, some team members muse over the show’s seating plan.
Park greets us, before rushing out to change from her gray hoodie into an Ashlyn look: a black peplum jacket (the peplum is an Ashlyn signature); a crisp cream button-up (also with a little ruched peplum); and draped black pants. “I have to wear the brand,” she tells me, knowing she’s about to be photographed. Afterward, Park continues to work with the team and adjust garments on the fit model, all while wearing her own design. The clothes are, after all, made to be worked and lived in. That Ashlyn pieces fit so seamlessly and successfully into women’s lives speaks to why Park is navigating more attention this season than she’s used to.
The pressure is on. The designer is fresh off of winning both the CFDA’s Google American Emerging Designer Award and the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund (CVFF) in quick succession last November. “I often say this [industry] is like a game; my studio is my playground,” Park says. “But after I got the award from CFDA, that attention gave me a certain pressure: I asked myself what I can do better, what I can do for the industry.”
This pressure to “do better” influenced the Fall/Winter 2026 collection. “Last season, I wasn’t able to show enough newness because I needed to go through the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund — it was a long process. It’s like seven months, one challenge after another,” she says. This meant the designer was strapped for time when working on the SS26 collection. “So I really pushed myself to show new pieces in this Fall/Winter season.”
If the SS26 collection was about the memories Park carries, hidden in rounded, voluminous garments, FW26 is the story of how she transmits these memories. “We talked about how I poured out that memory and experience into the collection,” she says. This season is a study in control and release; freedom and restraint. The garments feel lighter; still cinched at the waist but flowing more freely. The second dress uses “salvaged” fabric from other garments in the collection, attached neatly at one side, but trailing along the body at the other. Funnel neck jackets, in leather and bouclé, sit atop layered pieces.