The multimedia creative sits down with Man About Town to discuss his debut coffee table book.
Aaron Christian arrives energised and punctual to the waiting room of our 9 AM video call. He’s fresh from The Asian Man’s launch event, where he celebrated his inaugural venture into print publishing – a move in a different direction after years in fashion film, first at Mr Porter before founding content studio AC Studios, and co-hosting the What Is This Behaviour podcast, spotlighting South Asians who are going against the grain in their field.
In its earliest form, The Asian Man started as a Tumblr Page, spurred on by the lack of South Asian representation at international fashion weeks and menswear trade shows, which Christian noticed as his job took him to the industry’s epicentre. “I would see one other guy at Pitti [Uomo] that I thought had a really good style. And I thought ‘I wonder if there are more of us. I’m sure there’s more of us,’” says Christian. It took him months to find another guy like him. And it sparked a curiosity, and unflinching commitment to South Asian style that persists today, in the wake of the page’s migration to Instagram where personal profiles made it easier to find and document like-minded menswearheads.
“I never felt there was another guy like me who was into design or into fashion who was Asian. Asian guys, for me, liked music, maybe football, cricket, all of those other taste points. But when I found other guys that were into clothing, I was like ‘That’s my way of really feeling South Asian,’ weirdly. And then we get this connection point, and you realise all those taste points are similar,” says Christian, who reveals the project enabled the discovery of his maternal grandfather’s love of tailoring, connecting the dots between family members he never got to meet.
The next question might be – why is a guy with clear skin in the digital game, marked by a successful podcast and starry fashion gigs, pivoting to print? Because it runs deeper than likes, engagements and shares. “I’ve got a daughter, now, she’s two and a half years old, called Iris. When we knew we were going to become parents, there were thoughts of legacy, and what I was going to leave my kid. I’d love to have an impact in something that they can physically hold [and pass down],” he says, also spurred on by a scarily accurate tarot card reader, who assured him that he needed to finish the project. “The book we started about four years ago. I didn’t want to write it. The original concept [centred around] a photo book, because as well as stylish guys, we started to fall upon amazing photographers that would shoot South Asian creatives,” says Christian.
Upon reaching out to these creatives and faced with the inevitable questions of royalties, and a lack of finances to fund a side project of this scale, he returned to the drawing board. Then, he was prompted by a friend to shoot the book himself, keeping the focus on London, and overcoming a heavy dose of imposter syndrome in the process. This community aspect extended into his very lean team, which comprised Christian’s studio interns; Anup Parmar, a South Asian designer he connected with during an internship at a magazine, who is now working at Apple in art direction; and Jayshree Viswanathan, a copywriter he met though his podcast.
Shooting the book allowed Christian, who describes his style as “very menswear”, leaning on classic pieces like polos, shirts, and denim, to frame South Asian style in his own way. “I didn’t want to be too on the nail. Because I think growing up, whenever I used to see South Asian cultural men in the media, it was very Desi; super into heritage and showing all of the cultural norms. If that’s authentic to that person’s lifestyle, then great, we can shoot that. If it isn’t, we don’t have to do it,” says Christian. “I wanted it to be subtle. We’re stylish men, but we happen to be South Asian.”
Keeping things as authentic as possible, the 41-year-old focused on shooting his subjects as they went about their day-to-day lives. He cites a shoot with Indo-Portuguese fashion PR and social strategist Myles Pereira as a way of “showcasing the history of what South Asian culture is,” in the contexts of migration and colonialism, while also keen to stress that South Asian men and style stretches far beyond India. “I just wanted to try to give a really good spread of what we can reflect through our style and culture,” he says.
For a shoot with artist Amar Sara Singh, he shot in Whitechapel, Ilford, and Upton market, framing London’s South Asian style gurus against the backdrop of its traditional community spaces. “In terms of framing and approach my background came though, [with] documentary filmmaking and fashion. I wanted to take that step back, just observing the guys in their environment and not be too posy. I leaned on that,” says Christian.
Through natural snapshots of style, Christian has charted the evolution of South Asian menswear over 10 years on Instagram, and endeavoured to showcase the development with the book, too. “The younger generation is so brave. We had to code switch a lot. If we didn’t lean into our heritage a little because ‘we were menswear guys’, we leaned into western stuff. But now, I think they’re flipping so many different codes,” says Christian. “They’ll wear a lungi or sarong, but they’ll wear an amazing tailored shirt and mix it up. I think they’ve got this tapestry of options to choose from.”
It’s an approach that speaks to the young and old. At the brand’s launch event men’s style content duo Thread Culture captured Vox Pops with attendees, including photographer Farhid “Fats” Shariff, who shares anecdotes of being “the one Asian dude in the club” and now seeing his brothers and sisters in those spaces means he “is more inspired every day because of it.” It is just one example of the book pulling different generations together, all with a fervent appetite for on-the-pulse examinations of South Asian style and community.
Distilling a 10-year run of Instagram style documentary into print might seem like Christian is pulling the Uno reverse card on menswear media, switching from the freedom of socials, where posting can be endless and feeds constantly updated to a strict physical form. But it’s the opposite. The Asian Man on your coffee table is at its most refined, curated and sharp – real people captured and documented in the real world.
As for what’s next? “I’d love to have archive photos of everyone’s grandparents and granddads, because there’s all this amazing stuff that they wore. I’d like to really do this archive book, so it’s a proper dialogue between me and the community,” he says. “’I’d love to do a series focusing on what the book would look like, but in film format to really explore the stories. In film you can get deeper and richer.”
