Yahoo News Michelle Williams, Sadie Sink Land in Paris for Ashi’s Riyadh Air Uniform Reveal
Tom Hollander said the one word no one wants to hear in aviation.
“Evacute, evacuate,” joked the “Swans” star as he gallantly escorted his wife, the interior designer Fran Hickman, from the photo-call at a soirée celebrating the first outfits designed by Paris-based Saudi designer Ashi for Riyadh Air.
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The new airline, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is slated for its inaugural flight mid-2025.
Looking light on her feet as she crossed the cobblestone courtyard of the Monnaie de Paris in an Ashi Studio bustier dress, Michelle Williams said the design from fall 2022 with its bell-shaped skirt embroidered with three-dimensional flowers made her feel like a ballerina.
After posing in a Hollywood-style lineup with Hollander, Calista Flockhart and “Stranger Things” actress Sadie Sink, Williams traded impressions with Ashi on what she’d seen earlier in the day at his fall 2024 show.
Among her favorites was a cocoon coat embroidered with 15,000 square sequins that made the result look like a mosaic lifted from an opulent Italian villa’s boudoir.
“I just need a nomination and I can wear it,” said the actress, whose role in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” earned her Best Actress nominations at the Golden Globes and the Oscars in 2023.
Williams’ next one could be either in front of or behind the camera as she is also serving as producer for “Dying for Sex,” an upcoming drama about a woman exploring her sexuality after receiving a dire cancer diagnosis.
Inside the white cube that had hosted the Ashi Studio fall show, guests and dignitaries such as Saudi Esports Federation chairman Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud, Red Sea Film Festival foundation chairwoman and chief executive officer of media group SRMG Jomana Alrashid and Saudi deputy culture minister Noha Kattan discovered a set inspired by flight and the logo of Riyadh Air.
Each of the long dinner tables ended with a sweeping section with a dozen table settings soaring toward the ceiling.
After amethyst-shaped amuse bouche — a nod to Riyadh Air’s purple-blue livery — were served and before dinner, 15 silhouettes showcasing a selection of the options available to the airline’s cabin crew, pilots, concierges and airport agents took a turn on the runway.
Inspired by the golden age of aviation, Ashi sent out generously cut coats with wide shawl collars and curving hems, high-collar pencil dresses and smart tailoring options for male and female workers, together with jaunty pillbox hats in an amethyst palette inspired by the country’s lavender fields.
Joking that Leonardo DiCaprio, in his “Catch Me If You Can” character, had nothing on the model sporting a pilot uniform surrounded by his cabin crew colleagues, the airline’s CEO Tony Douglas raised his glass to the collection before guests tucked into a menu of cherry water-glazed tomatoes, pollock and lobster ballotine and fig-raspberry vacherin.
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