SACCHARINE and sour, delicately tailored and grossly adorned, Ashley Williams delivers an SS21 collection that ostentatiously embodies everything she stands for. Summed this season as “punk, pop, pretty and perverted”, a “bratty bad taste explosion of subcultures”, the collection is heralded by a cloud of mohair, ribbon and pentagon branded arm warmers.
Williams describes her creative process this season as one of real freedom: ‘This was my first season where nothing was designed in looks … I made individual garments that I wanted to admire or wear or carry,” this is a “random chaos of clothes” before it is a collection.
The result of this freedom is a spectrum of trashy delights; an inventory of the anarchist, playful, consumerist designs through which Williams has made her name.
Dreamt up in lockdown, the pieces bear hand sanitiser idolatry and William’s beloved diamond hair pieces are redesigned to read Only Fans, in homage to months spent at home. Old photographs of tattoo conventions are taken from Williams’ personal collection of magazines and blown cup across pencil skirts.
Tights are patterned and crop tops are too small, ’80s prom dresses are simultaneously awkward and sexy. The memorabilia of a sweet sixteen is twisted with patchwork mohair and acid green graffiti: a twisted clash of fetishised girlishness and alt youth culture.
William’s departure from the structure of ‘looks’ is translated into a celebration of her peculiar brand.
by Connie de Pelet