The World Builder Fashion Can’t Contain

HUR CONVERSATIONS

Jun 17

Yoon Ahn

The World Builder Fashion Can’t Contain

By Bonnie Langedijk

Few designers have recalibrated the cultural landscape with as much range—and staying power—as Yoon Ahn. As the co-founder and creative director of AMBUSH®, Ahn has turned what began as an experimental jewelry line into a globally recognised brand. Along the way, she has shaped the visual language of modern luxury through collaborations with Nike, Gentle Monster, Converse, and Louis Vuitton, all while serving as the Director of Jewelry at Dior Men under Kim Jones.

With a background in graphic design and a career that’s touched music, fashion, product, and now sake, Ahn operates like a creative director in the fullest sense of the word: genre-fluid, globally attuned, and relentlessly curious. Her work consistently points to the future—not just in form, but in function. She understood brand as a universe long before it became a buzz word. And she’s built that universe on her own terms: uncompromising, genre-less, and deeply rooted in community. Her business instincts are as sharp as her aesthetics—positioning AMBUSH® as both a cultural vehicle and a commercial force.

But it’s her ability to question the structures around her, and her refusal to compromise in doing so, that make Ahn such a singular voice in the industry. In this conversation, we talk about visibility, creative leadership, and why it's time to break the mold of what a female creative director is “supposed” to be.

*Dior Men Jewelry (2018-2022), designed by Yoon Ahn. Courtesy of Yoon Ahn.*

*AMBUSH® SS2025 Collection. Courtesy of AMBUSH®.*

Yoon: Can we talk about the state of female creative directors in fashion?

Let's dive into that.

Yoon: Why do you think there aren't that many female creative directors? I don't think it's a lack of talent.

The person who comes to mind straight away is Louise Trotter who was just hired at Bottega [Veneta]. She's one of those talents that's truly been overlooked by luxury brands until now. I think a lot of female creative directors have shunned away from building personal brands because the prolific examples of successful creative directors are always quite quiet and mysterious, especially the women; Phoebe Philo, Jil Sander, Miuccia Prada.

Yoon: We had Donatella Versace.

For women there's more of a spectrum where it's either you have this quiet kind of stature woman that we all want to know more about. And then you have the women who have such a personal brand that they almost transcend the brand. Donatella Versace, Stella McCartney. But I don't know. What do you think?

Yoon: There's wonderful women out there. I would love to see more singular, amazing visions. When you look at music there's room for all types of genres. I think that's why today people don't know how to comprehend a lot of the female fashion designers. There's this creative director stereotype, and you can only fall under certain categories.

“I would love to see more HONEST journalism, covering a whole array of wonderful, beautiful women, not just because something's funded and pushed and there's a certain agenda behind it.”

Agreed. Especially today, it's important for women to stand in their power. When people are, once again, trying to take it away from us.

Yoon: I want girls to be less apologetic. I would love to see more honest journalism, covering a whole array of wonderful, beautiful women, not just because something's funded and pushed and there's a certain agenda behind it.

There are a lot of people I reach out to who are very cautious around the media. Unfortunately, women specifically are, and maybe need to be more, cautious about how they are perceived in the public eye compared to men.

Yoon: The question is what are they afraid of? You don't owe anybody any answers. That in itself is an answer too. If you don't have a clear answer to me personally, I think it's more genuine to say: I'll come back to you. I don't really backtrack on my answers anyway.

I think one part of it is about being taken seriously. A lot of people are scared of being seen as an "influencer". Or that the focus will lie on how they look rather than what they think.

Yoon: I've gone through that stage. I came up in a male-dominated streetwear scene. It's not that I wanted to pull back my feminine side, but I wanted to make sure my work was taken seriously. I felt like I needed to wear this uniform look—t-shirt and jeans—to be seen as a serious designer. When we started the brand in Japan, whenever I had an interview with a fashion journalist, they would blatantly look at some male figure next to me and ask: “Who's the real creative director here?’ I wasn’t even mad about it.

Back then, this was more than a decade ago, the way female creatives were seen in Japan’s fashion scene was incredibly limited. Either you rarely showed yourself in public, like Rei Kawakubo, or you were constantly in the spotlight, in the style of Shibuya 109 brands under the vague title of creative director—more figurehead than decision-maker. So I tried, for a bit, to play into what I thought they might understand. I toned things down, leaned into the image of someone who was quietly suffering, just to see if it would make them take me more seriously. But it didn’t. What I learned was: I don’t need to play by their rules. I’ll wear whatever I want.

When I look at guys, they flaunt everything they do—they kill it with their work. They don’t back down from showing up as themselves. So why is it that, as women, we get more timid about that? I’ve arrived at a point where I’m so comfortable with myself, and I think I’ve proven myself through my work, that I don’t even need to verbalize anything.

How have you experienced being a woman in the streetwear industry, and also seeing how luxury speaks with female consumers versus male consumers?

Yoon: It’s often said that men are hunters. They move in groups and celebrate what they’ve hunted. Women, on the other hand, have traditionally been nurturers. We raise things, we gather, we build community. And I think, whether we realize it or not, some of those dynamics still shape how we operate today. Personally, I’ve always leaned a bit more toward the masculine side of that. I’m quite nerdy. I’ll dive into a subject and obsess over it for months. I’ve always believed that, as a designer, comprehension had to come first. I think those traits made it easier for me to connect with men. But at the same time, I did wish there were more female designers I could talk to. I was lucky to meet Chitose Abe from Sacai really early on. She was one of the first people to really support my work.

Nike Women by Yoon redefined tennis style through a subversive, fashion-led lens. The collaboration also brought Yoon Ahn and Naomi Osaka together to design custom day and night kits for Osaka’s return to the U.S. Open.

Fashion has always been a part of culture. But how, by who and in what way do you think culture is shaped today? And how has that changed since you started out?

Yoon: Information spreads faster and further. Take the recent boom of K-pop stars - the massiveness of their fandom isn't a new thing. Back in the day, it just existed mostly in Asia. Through social media the West got exposed more to what's happening in the East, and vice versa. Everything you see in the fashion industry doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's always an evolution and a reflection of shifts throughout culture, politics, and economics. And those things are constantly pushing against each other. Every few years, things shift. We go from hippies to power suits, then into a season of grunge. Right now, there’s so much happening in the world, and we’re receiving information all at once, at such a fast pace. I think the chaos is creating this flood of micro trends and people want to latch onto something, to feel something. But there isn’t enough time for anything to really brew and become part of the culture. I think that's why I think these TikTok mini ‘cores’ create certain looks and people try to build a culture and community out of it.

It's reversed, basically.

Yoon: It is. It’s a different way of consuming information. In a way, it feels detached, even though we’re constantly trying to stay connected to everything happening around the world. And it seems like the only way to make that connection now is through these looks or ‘cores’.

There is also no experimentation in it or discovering where something comes from.

Yoon: I think it's going to split into two groups. I think most are going to behave like bots. Any real character development takes time. The way I look at life is that you don't just naturally peak because you follow the social order of graduating college, getting your first job. Everything that you go through is meant to build your character until the day you die. Fashion is just a reflection of that character. What do you genuinely really like? That's why I admire true icons from the past. They were so original. What they were into, how they wore their hair, you can instantly recall who those people were. Younger generations don't have time to develop their characters. The only way they can project certain characteristics is by dipping in and out of these ‘core’ trends and look like someone else. It's almost like your life becomes a random Pinterest mood board, instead of an original gallery.

Circling back. You've done so many different things. Brand universe has become a part of the cultural lingo, but I think you were building one long before it became the norm. How do you decide what fits into that universe?

Yoon: I have to give you context on why I started the AMBUSH® universe. I noticed throughout early brand development that journalists kept asking me the same questions. Being the pattern reader that I am, because I like to analyze everything, I realized they were trying to frame me a certain way. None of them ever asked me what I was genuinely into. I knew they didn’t take me seriously. They probably thought I was kind of shallow. Creating the AMBUSH® universe was my way of showing them that I was into different things than what they wanted to stereotype me as. I could’ve sat there and gotten mad about the state of the media, but I realized I had the power to control the narrative. I had my own website and my own social media. That’s how I started building the AMBUSH® universe. I brought in Monique and Joanna from Champ Magazine to help me create it.

Another thing about fashion is, I've been an outsider from the beginning. My aspiration was to get to Paris Fashion Week. But when I arrived there and I saw how they do things in their own very traditional, European way, I was fascinated. I wanted to learn all of it. But I never felt comfortable. I’m always going to be the girl from the street. Once we started going to Paris around 2015—I realized fashion is a platform where you can exercise your ideas. I see the potential of how fashion can pull into so many different industries, how interconnected they are. That's why I welcomed so many collaborations before it became a marketing term. The biggest thing is: I’ve always been honest. I wasn’t trying to be this or that.

Some classically trained designers are like classical pianists. They refine their technique—and that’s beautiful. I respect that. But I think I’m more of a wild jazz musician. I like to try different instruments and see what kinds of sounds they can make. Does that mean I’m wrong? No. We’re just in different genres.

I love that. What are you into right now?

Yoon: These tech billionaires trying to turn governments into startups is an interesting almost dystopian world, but it's also quite interesting how we're witnessing the evolution of humanity. I have this theory. I think that Generation Alpha might be the last set of real human species.

We also just launched our own sake. It’s a space I wasn’t familiar with at all.There are a lot of factories outside of Tokyo. Every time I would go out to the countryside, I saw how many places had been abandoned. All these towns are becoming ghost towns. At the factory where we make the sake, the average age of the farmers is about 70. Even if they work really hard over the next 10 years, they’ll be 80. And being a farmer is tough work. When I went to the brewery, it got me thinking about cultural IP. Sake is very distinctive to Japan. The way they make the alcohol has been passed down through generations. It's not that older people don't want to pass the knowledge on, it's just that young people aren’t taking over. I saw an opportunity to do something to help these communities. If I can grow this business, then I can hire all these farmers. They won’t have to worry about where to sell, and I hope it encourages them to keep going.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.