You’d be stumped to find a progressive, modern-day jeweller quite like Yoon Ahn. The Tokyo-based creative and co-founder of Ambush has shaped her design language around innovative metalwork that is unlike anything else that occupies your jewellery box. Subversive and inspired by styles born on the streets, her necklaces, rings, bracelets and earrings come laced with rebellious spirit. A cult name in both the music and fashion spheres, Ahn was tapped by Kim Jones to steer Dior Men’s jewellery arm when he joined the house in 2018. This took her work to new, dizzying heights. Here, she reflects on her jewellery journey so far, from her early years as a DIY club kid through to working with couture ateliers in Paris.

I didn’t start becoming interested in jewellery until I was in my twenties. My parents were never heavily decorated people. It’s not like I inherited some precious heirloom pearl necklace from my grandma or anything, it was never like that. It came after I moved to Tokyo in 2003 and was meeting a lot of different people and making new friends. I was submerged in a lot of different music scenes and going out clubbing a lot. At that time, style in Japan was very close to the UK, where certain clothes would dictate that you were part of a certain music scene. You had to peacock to stand out. It wasn’t contrived like it is now, you just had to show that you had the style.

Jewellery become a tool where I could express myself more. I started experimenting with making it in a very DIY way. I wanted to pile it on and decorate myself, and the pieces I was making were very brash. I was thrifting a lot of things; it was all very handmade and about standing out. I was so into studs at the time, which I’d loop around bracelets and necklaces. People were like, “Don’t come around me when you’re drunk, you leave me with bruises!”

My friends started asking me to make them pieces for them to go out in, which you could say was the beginning of my Ambush journey.

Verbal [co-founder of Ambush and a music producer] came from the hip-hop scene with the likes of Nigo [creative director of Kenzo], who launched the Teriyaki Boyz project. Nigo and Pharrell were all about big chains and used to go to Jacob & Co. to make custom, chunky pieces. Before launching Ambush we started a jewellery line called Antonio Murphy & Astro in 2004, and when we started getting commissioned to create custom-made pieces, it all fell into place quite naturally. Verbal had made this huge knuckle ring that read ‘POW!’ in a ’60s-style comic book font, out of gold and diamonds, which got a lot of publicity. We decided to make smaller, single-finger versions of the ring in neon colours, giving them out to our friends for free. Back then, Kanye [West] was coming to Japan a lot, around the time of Graduation [in 2007]. He used to buy things in Japan and take them back to the US. On one trip he must’ve taken back one of the POW! chains because then all these people in the US were asking where they could get one. It wasn’t like one day we woke up and decided to launch a brand. We made things for fun and it started to spread organically.

We started getting orders and were like, “What do we do with this?”, “How do we even take orders?” I think it was Sarah [Andelman] from Colette [the now-shuttered, legendary Parisian boutique] who first reached out from overseas. We were packaging up orders from our apartments and shipping them across the world. Neither of us went to fashion school or anything, we were making things for fun. But after a few years, you have to decide whether you’re doing something to be creative or you want to turn it into a proper business. It’s like if you made a song that became a surprise hit. Do you want to stay a one-hit wonder, or do you want to see where you can go? That’s where the foundations of Ambush began.

When designing jewellery, a lot of my inspirations come from clothing. I love studying people and cultures. There was a time, for instance, when I was really into the Teddy Boy movement. There used to be this tiny bar in Tokyo we’d go to where people would dress up like Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls! Also, when [electronic label] Ed Banger’s records blew up, they were huge in Japan, as was the whole indie sleaze movement. Bringing in the colourful styles of Harajuku, you had this beautiful mix, an anything-goes attitude to getting dressed. People were having so much fun actually wearing fashion again. I was also big into the photographer Karlheinz Weinberger, who was capturing kids in Switzerland in the ‘50s just after the war, when American culture started to influence so many people. They were all working-class but loved the likes of Elvis and would grab metal pieces from local factories to make their own DIY belts and necklaces to look like their American idols.

We often associate jewellery with class, with all the gems conjuring up an image of wealth. But I realised you can use anything to decorate yourself, like these kids did, and just own it and express it. I started to think: what could be my story? I began expressing my love for different cultures and scenes in my jewellery. My design language got formed almost like a soup; a lot of things coming together and then creating a flavour.

I’ve always said that the best way to learn is to be as honest as possible. What I mean by this is that there are traditional ways of making jewellery, which you learn and practice in school. I never had any of that. I just went crazy with it, trying a bit of everything, until I started to realise which sort of pieces I like to create more than others. Over the years I’ve narrowed my focus. What you see now is a more refined version of Ambush than what we started with.

Kim [Jones] has been my friend for a long time and knows the journey of my progress as a designer. When he asked me to be part of his Dior Men team [Yoon was the maison’s jewellery director from 2018 to 2022], I was so honoured. Working for Dior was like going to Disneyland, but I got to see what goes on behind the scenes. Not only did I get to work with Kim, whom I respect dearly, I also learnt so much by getting that experience of being part of a heritage house because I came from a completely different background. Together we found ways to modernise the storytelling at the heart of the house, speaking to the current landscape of luxury shoppers.

I’ll always cherish Kim’s very first collection. We just went crazy with the jewellery, it was all so colourful. The first collection is almost like your first child: a legendary moment.

It’s crazy to think that since we started the brand in 2008 we’ve produced more than 800 pieces of jewellery, which is a lot compared to conservative jewellery brands. What I wear day to day is a more customised version of Ambush because I like things a little more personalised. For instance, I’ve been wearing a heart ring I made which has Mew from Pokémon holding it – Mew is my spirit animal.

I also like to go to a lot of local body piercing shops to customise my pieces. I tend to buy different components, like belly-button bars, and make my own parts out of it. I don’t really shop from other jewellery brands that often. Though when I’m in New York, I like to go to Popular Jewelry in Chinatown. Last time I was there I got a bootleg Hello Kitty put on to a heart locket.

There are sets of pieces that I repeatedly wear, but I do like to change things up often, as I get bored easily. There will be moments when I’ll layer necklaces. Then I’ll pull things back and wear super thin chains. I was really enjoying that in the summer. I usually like to mix it up with different materials but I think for winter I’m going to be wearing a lot of gold.

What’s been exciting for me recently is revisiting the older pieces I made in Ambush’s early days and bringing elements of them back into the brand’s new collections. It’s almost like sampling, transforming elements from our archive for new customers who mightn’t have realised how long we’ve been doing it for. What keeps me interested in jewellery is the versatility of it. I’m always trying to see how we can take one chain, for instance, and wear it three different ways. It always goes back to that DIY approach of the wearer being able to decide exactly how they want to style their pieces and fit Ambush into their own unique look. That’s something which will always keep me excited.

Ambush founder Yoon Ahn in her Tokyo studio

Photography by Takay. Taken from 10+ UK Issue 7– DECADENCE, MORE, PLEASURE – out NOW.

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