Teyana Taylor’s Sculptural Corset Is a Hairy Work of Art
This Victorian mourning tradition has gained serious traction on the red carpet
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
Teyana Taylor showed up to the 2026 Billboard Women in Music Awards in something between a museum installation and a fever dream—a sculptural corset gown that weaponized 18th-century craft techniques in the most unsettling way possible. The piece, crafted by Ashi Studio, didn't just reference historical fashion; it literally incorporated human hair, coiled and embroidered directly into the bodice like some kind of wearable memento mori.
The hair element wasn't random gothic theater. Ashi Studio drew inspiration from Victorian mourning traditions, when people would preserve locks of deceased loved ones in lockets or jewelry. Here, the house transformed that intimate ritual into haute couture statement—dark brown coils worked into swirling embroidery patterns across the corset, with an entire braid woven into the back ties for full commitment. The aged cloth was hand-painted to ensure historical accuracy, because if you're going to make people uncomfortable, you might as well do your research.
Decay as Design
The voluminous silk skirt balanced the morbid intensity of the top with its own visual language: hand-painted tulle layered to suggest rust and deterioration, creating an effect that was equally beautiful and deeply wrong. Together, according to Harper's Bazaar, the ensemble functioned as a walking piece from Ashi Studio's Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026 collection—less outfit, more statement.
This wasn't a one-off moment either. Taylor and Ashi Studio have become the year's most compelling collaboration, with the designer dressing her for everything from the Netflix premiere of The Rip in January to the NAACP Image Awards in March. The partnership reads less like standard celebrity styling and more like an artist finding their ideal muse: someone willing to sit in discomfort, literally and figuratively, for the sake of fashion that actually means something.
When a dress makes you squirm a little, asks you to reckon with mortality, and proves that haute couture can still provoke—that's when fashion transcends dressing and becomes art.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
