It’s not every day you meet a new designer who has already spent 25 years in the industry learning how to master his craft before so much as releasing a collection. @asimkan’s first collection, under his newly-launched label @3rd_migration is called First Youth. Demonstrating an almost obsessive relationship in perfecting what will soon become his signature visual tropes, each piece has been gracefully stitched from seam to sole. Asim’s layered and laminous nuances of Shibori indigo dyed trucker jackets, Zardosi flower-embroidered trench coats, and Scottish Harris-tweed cut out punk boots have defined his set of skills and in-turn reveal a heritaged and handmade leather capsule collection he has spent over two years in research alone. With a firmer grasp on his sense of Britishness than most, the cultural mash-up Asim collated to homage the collection echoes the spirit of his youth – all in an artistic amalgam of Britain’s 80s streetwear scene. Exposed to punks, skinheads, goths, B-boys and casuals growing up in textile mill myriad Dewsbury, Yorkshire, Asim never felt like he fit into one of those categories, but his First Youth collection crosses all the above and proves he took it into immeasurable detail. Asim’s coup de maître is his leather flower-dyeing technique. A set of skills that have not yet been mastered by any of his contemporaries. Traveling to Japan, India, and Pakistan over his cross-cultural research process, the apprentice soon became the master and in-turn championed the embroidery and color dyeing techniques of each region. His bold recontextualization of his youth has given birth to a riotous capsule collection showcasing Asim’s material masterclass and one that has attracted British institutions such as The Tate and more recently the V&A. ‘Being British is not just the representation of the queen. It’s the representation of all of the people and surrounding cultures that make up Britain,’ Asim tells me for @systemmagazine online. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, cometh the Mughal Punk, Asim Khan. Thank you for the introduction @moritz.schuermann ⚡️