We introduce a notion of disjoint envelope functions to study asymptotic structures of Banach spaces. The main result gives a new characterization of asymptotic-$ℓ_{p}$ spaces in terms of the $ℓ_{p}$-behavior of "disjoint-permissible" vectors of constant coefficients. Applying this result to Tirilman spaces we obtain a negative solution to a conjecture of Casazza and Shura. Further investigation of the disjoint envelopes leads to a finite-representability result in the spirit of the Maurey-Pisier theorem.