Ashish Had Skateboarding Glitter Fairies — Your Runway Show is Obsolete

Models on skateboards at Ashish’s spring 2016 show in London. Photo: Instagram/@ashish_uk

What else can you really say about a show that featured skateboarding glitter fairies? Before the music dropped at today’s Ashish show in London, we heard the grinding sound, familiar to any city-dweller, of wheels turning on concrete. Heads whipped to the runway entrance to see a pair of models in white sweatshirts and pants whiz by on skateboards, their long hair blowing in the breeze. They turned around just as another pair skated out, criss-crossing in the middle of the catwalk. Not since the boys from Zoolander hit the Valentino runway have so many phones been whipped out and set to “Video” so quickly.

Models in glitter-covered separates at Ashish’s show. Photo: Getty Images.

Designer Ashish Gupta, never one to color inside the gender lines, also sent out the gents above, holding hands as they strutted down the runway in glitter-bombed separates and high heels. The one at right looked like he’d been practicing his runway walk all his whole damn fabulous life. At one point he stopped to twerk to the crowd’s delight, at other times he struck a “and what?” pose at the crowd and blew a fistful of glitter at the spectators. #SoBlessed.

A model in a white chiffon dress in a glitterstorm. Photo: Getty Images.

It was a rainbow-glitter kind of day — few pieces in the collection were without dense splotches of it. The models wore it in their hair, and on their eyelids. They threw fistfuls in the air to rain down on them when they hit their pose in front of the photographer’s pit. It trailed behind them when they walked, littering the runway. If you grew up in the ‘90s or ever had a glam-rock phase (or even if not), it was all so f*cking beautiful.

Musician M.I.A. with Ashish designer Ashish Gupta. Photo: Instagram/@ashish_uk

M.I.A. was there, posted up in front row in an inside-out green sweatshirt, matching green jeans, and plain white Reeboks. She received some of the models’ glitter blessings, and posed backstage with Ashish Gupta, who wore glitter in his beard.

Final walk at Ashish’s spring 2016 show. Photo: Getty Images.

And so the final walk became the final skate, as models whizzed by on their boards again. Now that we’re two weeks into fashion month, people are starting to look worse for the wear. Today, the sniffling, run-down fashion editors in the audience, and the underslept models on the runway were transformed into gleeful (or at least smiling) kids. London Fashion Week went out in a cloud of youthful esprit and rainbow glitter. As it should.

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