threeASFOUR

threeASFOUR is an independent New York fashion house founded in 2005 by Gabriel Asfour, Angela Donhauser, and Adi Gil. The founders came from Lebanon, the former Soviet Union, and Israel, and have described the label as a kind of “United Nations of Fashion.” Their background has informed a body of work that treats fashion as both an advanced design discipline and a vehicle for imagining coexistence among cultures and religions. The house emerged after the earlier design collective ASFOUR came to an end. ASFOUR, established in 1998 by Asfour, Donhauser, Gil, and Kai Khune, became associated with downtown New York’s experimental fashion scene. Its Circle Bags were particularly identified with that milieu, while its Chinatown studio, known as the Silver Cage, functioned as a meeting place for fashion, art, and performance. After Khune departed to develop his own label, Asfour, Donhauser, and Gil continued under the threeASFOUR name, placing greater emphasis on developing a sustained fashion company while retaining the earlier collective’s artistic and interdisciplinary character. threeASFOUR’s design language centers on natural geometries, symmetry, modular forms, and unusual relationships between the body, surface, and garment structure. Collections often transform religious or cultural symbols into shared visual systems rather than treating them as isolated traditions. Spring 2012’s “InSALAAM InSHALLOM,” for example, brought together references associated with Jewish and Arab heritage, including keffiyeh patterns, the evil eye, the hamsa, six-pointed stars, and tallit shawls. Spring 2014’s “Mer Ka Ba” expanded this approach through geometries inspired by churches, synagogues, and mosques. Technological experimentation is equally central to the label. In “Mer Ka Ba,” the house introduced its first two 3D-printed dresses in collaboration with Materialise and architect Bradley Rothenberg. Later projects with Stratasys, Travis Fitch, Epson, Mimaki, Kornit Digital, and other collaborators explored 3D printing, digital textile production, extended-reality presentation, and digital fashion. Rather than using technology merely as decoration, threeASFOUR has sought to make new production methods determine the garment’s silhouette, material behavior, and visual vocabulary. Its work has included garments printed directly onto existing textiles, digitally generated environments, and NFT-based fashion objects that could also be produced physically through proportional 3D printing. The house maintains a close relationship with artists, musicians, performers, and cultural institutions. Its collaborators and clients have included Yoko Ono, Björk, Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Solange, Billy Porter, Caroline Polachek, Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, and Joey King. It has also worked with artists such as Matthew Barney and Stanley Casselman. These relationships have allowed the brand to operate across runway fashion, performance art, music, film, museum exhibition, and digital media. threeASFOUR presents work in New York and has been represented in major museum collections and exhibitions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt, the Museum at FIT, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 2015, the house received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for fashion design. Its overall positioning combines avant-garde fashion, couture craftsmanship, computational and digital design, and a recurring message of cultural interconnection.

threeASFOUR’s roots lie in ASFOUR, a design collective founded in New York in 1998 by Gabriel Asfour, Angela Donhauser, Adi Gil, and Kai Khune. The collective operated from a Chinatown studio called the Silver Cage and became associated with downtown New York’s interdisciplinary fashion and art culture. ASFOUR’s Circle Bags were especially visible within that scene. The group also pursued collaborations beyond conventional apparel: in 2004 it produced a capsule collection with Kate Spade, and in 2007 it became a finalist in the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, leading to a capsule collaboration with Gap. That year it also worked with artist Matthew Barney on The Guardian of the Veil, a performance presented at the Manchester Opera House. After Khune left to pursue his own label, Asfour, Donhauser, and Gil established threeASFOUR in 2005. The new house retained ASFOUR’s experimental spirit but developed a more focused identity around geometric construction, technical research, and social themes. The founders’ different national and cultural backgrounds became part of the label’s public identity, and the designers described the studio as a “United Nations of Fashion.” Their collections frequently use shared or neighboring visual traditions to argue for connections between communities. The Spring 2010 collection was created with Yoko Ono and reinterpreted her performance Cut Piece. During the presentation, a spiraling garment was cut away to reveal a white bandeau top and briefs. The collaboration reflected threeASFOUR’s tendency to treat the runway as performance rather than as a simple product display. The label also developed a strong relationship with Björk, dressing the musician for projects including the Biophilia and Utopia tours, while creating highly recognizable stage and editorial looks for Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Solange, and other performers. Spring 2012’s InSALAAM InSHALLOM made the house’s intercultural agenda especially explicit. It combined references associated with Jewish and Arabic traditions, including the keffiyeh, hamsa, evil eye, six-pointed stars, and tallit, and sought to express commonality through geometry. Spring 2014’s Mer Ka Ba continued the idea by drawing on tiling and architectural motifs from churches, synagogues, and mosques. The collection marked a major technical turning point: two dresses were 3D printed in collaboration with Materialise and architect Bradley Rothenberg. A related solo installation at the Jewish Museum included a runway presentation and a large temple-like structure designed with Christian Wassmann. The house also presented Fest at the Performa festival, where “bread dresses” turned the act of breaking bread into a participatory performance. From the mid-2010s onward, technology became an increasingly defining part of the brand’s practice. Fall/Winter 2016’s Biomimicry, made with Stratasys and Travis Fitch, included dresses designed specifically around the possibilities of 3D printing. Earlier projects such as Topographic and Tree of Life had already explored digital environments, while the Pre-Fall 2018 collection used Epson digital sublimation printing and imagery derived from Linden Gledhill’s cymascopic photography. The label also reused artistic materials: Fall 2019 garments incorporated recycled canvases supplied by Stanley Casselman, and Pre-Fall 2019 included repurposed denim, including paint-marked and vintage jeans. Spring 2020’s Human Plant investigated relationships between botanical structures and human anatomy. Its Chro Morpho group, developed with Fitch and Stratasys, used 3D printing directly on pre-existing textiles rather than printing complete garments. Spring 2022’s Vesica Piscis, produced with Mimaki, was presented through an XR film made with Alex Czetwertynski and Worldstage Inc., using an LED stage and in-camera augmented reality. The SS22 Kundalini project was developed with Kornit Digital and further explored digitally printed apparel. For Fall/Winter 2022 Couture, Ancestors moved into fully digital presentation, turning earlier looks into NFT-based garments through DressX while retaining the possibility of physical production. The house’s work has been collected and exhibited internationally. Its garments have appeared in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt, the Museum at FIT, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and other institutions. In 2015, threeASFOUR received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for fashion design. The brand remains best understood as a hybrid fashion-and-art practice: it produces garments, but also develops material experiments, performances, films, installations, and digital objects.

• 2022

  Ancestors enters digital fashion

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  The Fall/Winter 2022 Couture presentation offered digital garments as NFTs through DressX, with a route toward physical 3D-printed versions.

• 2020

  Human Plant

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  Human Plant examined botanical structures and human anatomy, including Chro Morpho garments 3D-printed directly onto textiles.

• 2016

  Biomimicry advances 3D-printed fashion

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  The Fall/Winter 2016 collection developed two fully 3D-printed dresses with Stratasys and Travis Fitch.

• 2015

  Cooper Hewitt National Design Award

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  threeASFOUR received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for fashion design.

• 2014

  Mer Ka Ba introduces 3D-printed dresses

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  The Spring 2014 collection presented the house’s first two 3D-printed dresses and became the basis for a Jewish Museum installation.

• 2012

  InSALAAM InSHALLOM

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  The Spring 2012 collection used Jewish and Arabic symbols to explore cultural connection and shared geometry.

• 2010

  Collaboration with Yoko Ono

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  The Spring 2010 collection reinterpreted Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece as a runway performance.

• 2005

  threeASFOUR founded

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  Asfour, Donhauser, and Gil continued their work under the threeASFOUR name after the earlier collective ended and Khune departed.

• 1998

  ASFOUR collective established

  [1]Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org

  Gabriel Asfour, Angela Donhauser, Adi Gil, and Kai Khune established the earlier ASFOUR design collective in New York.

An avant-garde New York fashion house combining geometric design, couture craft, advanced manufacturing, digital presentation, and intercultural symbolism.

• Apparel · 2005

  Experimental ready-to-wear

  threeASFOUR’s main output is experimental apparel built around geometric pattern cutting, sculptural volumes, unusual surface treatments, and references to natural or architectural forms. Collections are presented as design propositions as much as seasonal merchandise, often combining couture-level handwork with digitally produced textiles or unconventional fabrication.

• Advanced fashion technology · 2014

  3D-printed garments

  The house has developed dresses and other garments using additive manufacturing, sometimes producing the complete garment and sometimes printing directly onto existing fabric. These projects investigate how digital fabrication can generate both a garment’s surface and its three-dimensional silhouette.

• Digital fashion · 2022

  Digital fashion and NFT garments

  Ancestors translated selected threeASFOUR looks into digital fashion objects issued as NFTs in collaboration with DressX. The project connected virtual clothing with the possibility of producing proportionally scaled physical garments through 3D printing.

• Accessories

  Circle Bags

  Circle Bags were associated with the earlier ASFOUR collective and became a recognizable accessory within downtown New York’s early-2000s experimental fashion culture. They are included as an important predecessor to the threeASFOUR design vocabulary.

• 2022

  Extend the house into digital fashionStrategy

  Background

  After earlier experiments with XR films and digital environments, the house explored whether its garments could exist as both virtual objects and physically producible designs.

  Action taken

  Ancestors presented digital replicas of Vesica Piscis looks as NFTs in collaboration with DressX.

  Aftermath

  The project connected threeASFOUR’s digital presentation practice with a potential made-to-measure physical production process.

  Source

• 2014

  Adopt 3D printing as a garment-making methodProduct launch

  Background

  The house wanted technology to influence not only textile decoration but also the structure and silhouette of clothing.

  Action taken

  For Mer Ka Ba, threeASFOUR collaborated with Materialise and Bradley Rothenberg to create its first two 3D-printed dresses.

  Aftermath

  3D printing became a recurring signature of the label’s subsequent work, including collaborations with Stratasys and Travis Fitch.

  Source

• 2005

  Continue as threeASFOUR after ASFOURStrategy

  Background

  Following the end of the ASFOUR collective and Kai Khune’s departure, the remaining designers sought to focus more directly on building a continuing design company.

  Action taken

  Gabriel Asfour, Angela Donhauser, and Adi Gil established threeASFOUR and developed a house identity centered on geometry, technology, and intercultural dialogue.

  Aftermath

  The new label retained the earlier collective’s art-oriented approach while building a longer-term fashion practice and museum presence.

  Source

1. 1Threeasfouren.wikipedia.org