Robert Wun, Sasha Gordon, & Julian Aguon: Queer Asian and Pasifika Honorees in TIME 100 Next

Robert Wun, Sasha Gordon, and Julian Aguon are among the 100 rising leaders, artists, innovators, and changemakers recognized on TIME’s annual TIME100 Next list, honoring people who are shaping the future in their respective fields.

Robert Wun — Phenom

Robert Wun is a Hong Kong-born fashion designer currently based in London whose boundary-pushing designs have made him one of the most exciting names in contemporary couture.

Wun began his professional career after his graduate collection at the London College of Fashion caught the eye of Joyce Boutique in 2012. After two years at the boutique, he ventured out on his own and established his namesake label. In 2023, Wun presented his first runway show in Paris, becoming the first designer from Hong Kong to join the Haute Couture Calendar.

Since then, his designs have been worn by some of the world’s biggest stars on some of the world’s biggest stages. His notable collaborations include Beyoncé for her Renaissance and Cowboy Carter tours, Lisa at the Met Gala, and Ariana Grande for the Wicked premieres. Wun has also designed for the Las Vegas residencies of both Lady Gaga and Adele.

As a gay Asian designer from Hong Kong, Wun has also carved out a distinctive place within an industry where Asian and LGBTQ+ perspectives have historically been underrepresented at the highest levels of fashion.

Sasha Gordon — Phenom

Sasha Gordon is a 28-year-old painter born and raised in New York, known for her uncanny and ethereal self-portraits exploring identity, the body, and the complexities of being seen.

From her first exhibition in 2021 at Matthew Brown Gallery in Inglewood to her first solo exhibition, Haze, presented by David Zwirner in New York, Gordon has quickly established a distinctive visual language that is both intimate and surreal. Her work has been included in 12 institutional collections, 23 group exhibitions, and five solo exhibitions.

As a queer Asian American artist, Gordon’s paintings often explore the relationship between identity and the body, using her own image as a starting point for larger questions of representation, perception, and selfhood.

“In the past few years, I used the skills to translate storytelling and narrative and feeling. I had some great professors [at RISD], and a lot of them were telling me to be looser. I’m a very uptight detailed person and I still am. There’s a way of keeping that but still inventing something new, rather than painting something as realistically or as close to the reference image as possible. There’s so much you can do with paint. It’s limitless.”

— Sasha Gordon, Office Magazine (2025)

Julian Aguon — Innovator

Julian Aguon is a CHamoru human rights lawyer, writer, and founder of Blue Ocean Law, a firm dedicated to defending Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and the rights of communities across the Pacific. He is also the author of No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay.

Founded by Aguon in 2014, Blue Ocean Law focuses on protecting Pasifika Indigenous rights, advancing climate justice, and challenging environmental threats. Aguon’s work has brought him to some of the world’s most important legal and human rights forums, including cases involving U.S. militarization in Micronesia, climate change and international law, and deep-sea mining in the Pacific.

Through his legal advocacy and writing, Aguon has become a prominent voice for Indigenous Chamorro rights and Pacific Islander communities confronting the effects of colonialism, militarization, and the climate crisis.

“All of us—whether we choose to become human rights lawyers or corporate counsel, or choose never to practice law at all but instead become professors or entrepreneurs or disappear anonymous among the poor or stay at home and raise bright, delicious children—all of us, without exception, are qualified to participate in the rescue of the world.”

— Julian Aguon, No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay