Ashley Williams (Q2722)
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Ashley Williams is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Ashley Williams |
Ashley Williams is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
As Britney Spears’s “Overprotected” blasted from the speakers at Ashley Williams’s spring show, models came down the runway in adult-size baby rompers, Sailor Moon–esque dresses, and an array of pieces covered in a vintage-inspired bunny print. “The main inspiration was [the idea of] exploring different parts of yourself, different ways in which you show up in the world,” the designer explained backstage following the show.The opening looks explored the “emotionally immature character,” hence the babyish feel. Then came the “idealized version of yourself,” represented by superhero-like dresses featuring large keyhole cutouts and combs adorning the long blonde wigs and several of the dresses—signaling, in Williams’s mind, someone who is “fully functioning” and in control (in contrast to those trying to hide behind their hair via wigs that covered half the models’ faces).Then there was the “boundaryless, angry, vulnerable” character, signified by the leather breastplate and matching skirt embossed with the outline of a gun. The motif—also emblazoned across dresses and a tracksuit top and skirt—felt somewhat jarring, particularly alongside a cap and T-shirt printed with the slogan “Happiest girl in the world” next to bloody bullet wounds.Still, there was much for the brand’s loyal fan base, many of whom were at the show, to get excited about, from the dalmatian skirt to the cutesy shoulder bags. Williams is a master at universe building: it’s her world, and we’re all just living in it.
16 September 2024
In articulating her creative process, Ashley Williams remarked in a preview: “If I could easily explain it, then I probably wouldn’t make it.” This statement encapsulates her approach to design, which eschews conventional tropes in favor of visceral expression.Returning to showing IRL on the runway last season after her brand’s three-year hiatus, Williams defies industry expectations, preferring to trust her instincts and respond intuitively to her surroundings, all while showing her collections off the official schedule. For fall, she did what she does best: Dump all her raw emotions into her craft. “I’ve been experimenting with more personal themes than ever before, and not worrying about the outcome or how people will perceive them,” she said.Continuing on the cut-and-paste vibes from last season, albeit presented in lookbook format, themes of death and rebirth were abstractly depicted through jaunty, anarchic designs—ranging from the elegant to the occult and macabre. Ultra-cute manga characters adorned baby tees, caped tops, midi skirts, and shift dresses—oh, and adakimakura(aka a human-sized body pillow). “I call her Brandon, named after Hilary Swank’s character inBoys Don’t Cry—but Brandon is a boy,” she explained. “Normally the characters on these pillows are hyper-sexualised with giant breasts, so to flip that on its head I gave Brandon a giant erection.”Structured, pleated shift dresses in check and duchesse satin featured transparent inserts revealing undergarments or breasts: “It’s a play on modest dressing, but sometimes you just want to show off your cool underwear!” the designer said. Last season’s “I Heart Me” print extended onto ballet pumps, baker boy caps, leg warmers, and tote bags, as well as a jacket and hot pants sets and a midi-skirt-meets-drop-crotch-pants hybrid. This new pant silhouette was also seen in denim and wool.Another extension from last season, Jesus and cross motifs, permeated the lineup, with inspiration drawn from Caravaggio’s ecclesiastical painting,The Incredulity of Saint Thomas. Williams reinterpreted this moment with a bleeding cut screen-printed onto a gray linen sleeveless dress, symbolizing birth and Jesus’s wound being examined by his disciples. A decapitated dove print on a caped dress came as an ode to the Giles Deacon dress Lily Allen wore to the Glamour Awards in 2008, where she was famously carried out of the event. “I just really loved those images of her,” said Williams.
Although Williams’s designs and their references may not be straightforward, exploring her creations reveals cryptic yet thoughtful meanings behind details and motifs—like a pick ‘n’ mix bag of sweets: You never know what you’re going to get.
6 March 2024
Following a few years lying fallow, Ashley Williams fired up her label again to return to London’s runway scene this evening. As ever, and possibly more than ever, she filled her collection with quirky details that contrasted the cute with the coruscating and the sacred with the profane. Why were her models sometimes carrying rune-etched wizard’s crooks or costume-store dwarf axes? What were the numbers all about at the end? Why Jesus?After answering a few of these inquiries backstage, Williams delivered the metaphor that encapsulates her broader way of working: “This is how I describe it in a way that makes sense to me. Imagine a charm bracelet: Individually when you separate them, all the charms don’t make any sense. But together they’re a collection of ideas and experiences that you go through in a period of time.”The moviesHard to Be a GodandThe Seventh Sealwere two prime sources in Williams’s episodic diary of fascination. She imagined 16th-century face masks as facial-recognition blockers (per the release) on “I Heart Me” hoodies and above rare–for–London Fashion Week day dresses, and recast linen shifts made after medieval shapes. Customized footwear included boots by Ugg, which also bankrolled the Fashion East-overseen bursary that in part enabled Smith to stage her return for this show. Baby knits were worn as hats; T-shirts featured in utero human embryos (Williams reckoned this was because many of her friends participated in the COVID-era baby-making opportunity.) Her cutesy bow motif gift wrapped many of these allusive and elusive looks.Some of the illustrations and writing were created in workshops at the Gate, an arts space for people with learning disabilities in London. “It’s about trying to get rid of the barrier in art: Art should be boundaryless,” said Williams. Her garments are strips of litmus colored by her experiences, impulses, and instinct.
16 September 2023
Not long before she began making this collection, Ashley Williams found two tiny partridge chicks lying desperate, nestless and deserted on the lawn of the country house she had recently decamped to with her boyfriend. She took them in, named them Penny and Peter (mystifyingly overlooking the obvious option that is Alan, and so the household, which also consists of rescue dogs Stuart and Didi, was complete. Moving out of London, said Williams has distinctly altered her creative process: “Things that used to drive you seem less important, and on the other side I feel it has opened me up to new areas which I really enjoy.”As per, this was an instinctively eclectic clothing collage packed with jaunty, sometimes absurdist garments built both to attract and evade attention. Prints featured belly button and tongue bars, while actual piercing hardware was used to embellish knitwear and fringe a Chanel-y skirt suit. The dirndl-esque dress at the top was hand airbrushed by a guy Williams found online who usually specializes in detailing muscle cars, while the tartan-skirted girl printed on another skirt was an image taken again from her cache of old tattoo enthusiast magazines.Some of these details served wryly to deflect, others to reflect. Interesting insights into psychological states included the sad face knit and two pieces upon which a little girl-sized dress were attached, as well as an adult size version of the same dress. Said Williams: “It was about how equipped I feel as an adult, because sometimes I just feel like a complete adult baby that can’t function in the world.”Williams is a whimsical, autobiographical designer with an evolved sense of dark-tingedkawaii; it was interesting here to see her work reflecting some more complex states of the soul, yet that did not detract from the manic appeal of her usual abundance of found decorations and reference. She said: “A lot of the things are comments on my life, so when I got dogs I started doing dog things or dog prints everywhere. I actually had to stop myself from doing a partridge print for this collection.” Expect Penny and Peter to fly into view soon enough.
7 June 2021
“In 2020 the world changed. In a subconscious reaction, designer Ashley Williams changed too; she stopped worrying about criticism.” Well, that’s damn lucky for her—the next couple of hundred words won’t sting at all! In truth, however, her press release’s inviting intro aside, there wasn’ttoomuch to kvetch about in this typically twisted and sometimes entertaining collection from Williams.As she explained, her creative position was because of You Know What: “I couldn’t do any formal research for this collection; my formal research would be like picking up bits and bobs as I go and collecting things. So I kind of did a bit of internet research, but it was just like an accumulation of small ideas that all came together.”This digital bricolage approach was supplemented by the snaffling of stuff from things she’d already stashed, such as the vintage 1980s troves of tattoo convention magazines whose inked models were reprinted on pieces, or pictures of her dogs given fresh walkies on sportswear. There was a fluffy little kitten on the groin of a miniskirt—ha!—and crystal cobweb or paw-print boob dress and pentagram bra-tops in mohair. There was a nicely faux cutesy ironic bow story running throughout—so there was a kind of narrative, after all—whether as hairpieces or integrated over some excellently silhouetted punk-meets-prom dresses. A minidress featured Jesus mid-crucifixion: “Just something I found on the internet.”Added Williams: “Sometimes when I have been making things in the past there has been that thought process of: ‘Ahh, I can’t do that because, you know, it’s not gonna sell. No one’s gonna want that’. And I just kind of have to rein myself in a little bit. But I felt like this time, I was like: ‘Ohh, if I want to do a drawing of like, a man puking my name and a dog, like, pooing it out—then I’ll just do it.’ ”Because if not now, when, right? Not all of Williams’s I-Really-Don’t-Care-Do-U-ness struck entirely true, but whatever: Her flotsam-and-jetsam approach can sometimes yield treasure, and if you’re not interested in picking it up, then just keep walking.
14 October 2020
Sometimes all it takes to refresh the senses is a well-deserved break, and that’s something Ashley Williams can relate to. She was back on the London Fashion Week schedule today after taking a brief hiatus, and appeared to be in fighting form.The show opened with a pretty puffball minidress appliquéd with pink dollar bills, a look that instantly encapsulated the designer’s tongue-in-cheek approach to fashion. Williams tends to pull from a grab bag of disparate, high-low cultural references, and the mix was especially good this season. To update her now signature fringed jersey tanks and pencil skirts, she used air-spray portraits of the Mona Lisa and Albert Einstein, which had an irreverent sense of cool (last season, her dog Didi took pride of place).There were more pups for fall, this time not air sprayed, but photo printed in miniature on a neat satin coat and writ large on a thigh-skimming shift. Williams has been honing her party-dressing skills for the past year, and her latest offering was her most confident yet. Replete with gigantic bows, the ruffled acid-wash frocks and black-and-white marabou feather skirts were a twisted take on the debutante look; they would be right at home on an episode ofEuphoria.Like many women of her generation, Williams has made female camaraderie and community building an integral part of her process. Among the friends who walked the runway was Claire Barrow, her former classmate, who modeled an oversized T-shirt dress that was patch-worked with both of their designs. The finale piece—a dramatic strapless ball gown created with upcycled fabric and remnants from Barrow and Williams’s studio—was proof that, more often than not, two hands are better than one.
14 February 2020
Ashley Williams took a break from London Fashion Week this season due to an unexpected health issue. So it was a pleasant surprise to find the young designer well-rested and surrounded by her biggest collection yet at the London Showrooms in Paris this morning. Dressed in one of her new patchwork emoji mohair sweaters and a romantic full-skirted dress printed with Roman statues, Williams epitomized the tongue-in-cheek energy of her brand, where high and low culture butt up against each other. There was a smorgasbord of good-taste-bad-taste references in the new collection, many plucked from the designer’s archive, including thePlayboymotif and an airbrush painted rendering of Venus de Milo that appeared on faded jeans and fringed tees. Williams’s adorable pet dog Didi also got the airbrush treatment, appearing on the brand’s new corsets. Made in bubblegum pink, optic white, and black, they were a genius twist on Vivienne Westwood’s waist-whittling Renaissance art pieces of the ’90s that have recently become wildly popular all over again thanks to high-profile collectors like FKA Twigs.Williams has been exploring the idea of evening in the last few seasons, and her marabou-feathered party dresses came with an appealing dose of wit: think, a life-sized airbrushed poodle portrait. If girls just want to have fun with fashion, then Williams has the right sense of what that looks like for millennial and Gen Z women. Her best-selling diamanté slogan barrettes have been copied the world over, and her latest offering of accessories is bound for global success too. After all, what cool girl could possibly resist the charm of her new “best friends” mini bag, airbrushed as it is with Didi’s puppy dog face.
7 October 2019
From the moment Adwoa Aboah emerged from backstage between two mushrooms, wearing a black silk skirt and a zip-up fleece covered in a sperm print, it became apparent that this was a collection with a distinct decorative theme. “The power of the penis is a magical thing,” said the notes. “It’s kind of young-granny,” said the designer of the collection. Neither statement was mutually exclusive—not at all—especially at a time when penis power has been so badly repped by the owners of penises.The sexuality in this collection was not tilted toward the male viewer, but the woman who is viewed and doesn’t care what the viewer thinks. She was herself in her chisel-toe Jimmy Choo flats and shearling bags mixed with dressed-in-the-dark, properly nasty color stories and Sunday-morning-bodega-run fleeces worn over from-last-night party dresses. The punk trousers and kilts were a sweet throwback to the 20th century, when things were so analog and simple. Cat-relief mohair knits were a warning—or an embrace—of spinster-dom. Speaking as a simple, stupid, moronic man, there was some sexy stuff—the tiered silver dress, the tie-dye vest dress with a cry for “sex” printed on its back—but my eye wasn’t the audience Williams was hoping to fluff. This was a collection for assertive hetero (or flexible) women who are into the power of the penis but want to feel empowered, not objectified. Sperm is the new leopard print.
15 February 2019
Ashley Williams tends to draw a crowd of cool kids, and tonight she hosted a particularly special guest. Bria Vinaite, the breakout star ofThe Florida Project, opened the show in a one-piece bathing suit printed with the slogan, “Retired and loving it.” The actress was designing her own line of weed-themed T-shirts before she was discovered and cast in the role of Halley, the movie’s rebellious but well meaning single mom, and her spirited, street-smart attitude makes her a fitting poster girl for Williams’s brand. Vinaite is set to star in Harmony Korine’s new movie,The Beach Bum, and the onesie plastered with the movie’s title looked suspiciously like merch.Williams isn’t afraid to tread the line between good taste and bad, and that makes spring-breaker misadventures rife territory for inspiration. Slacker-ready tie-dye track pants and sweaters were emblazoned with ominous slogans, including, “Where will you spend Eternity?” The designer’s darkly humorous instincts were at their best on a newsprint motif that covered sexy sheer LBDs and more demure, puff-sleeved 1980s-prom-style frocks, including one in silver that stole the spotlight towards the end of the show. Williams has made her name with flashy diamanté hair clips and ironic skater-girl hoodies, but this season there was a wider range of party dressing options for girls who just want to have fun, too.
14 September 2018
Ashley Williams constructed a Stonehenge-inspired set on her runway today. It’s an unlikely reference for a brand that’s built on cool London vibes. Still, in this hyper-accelerated age of social media, there’s something appealing about slowing down and tuning into ancient forms of creativity, or, as Williams put it in the show notes, “ditching technology and . . . exploring the U.K. and all its monolithic marvels.”So what if druids roamed the streets of East London now? Well, in Williams’s imagination they’d probably be wearing the modest empire-line frocks in black and white that opened the show. Like many women of her generation, Williams isn’t afraid to tread the line between good taste and bad; she followed up those sober designs with a passage of party looks at the opposite end of the spectrum—unabashedly risqué, sheer, skintight, and printed with the wordsexin all caps.The most seductive clothes in the collection, however, drew on a slouchier, tomboy aesthetic. The label’s trademark long-sleeved skater tees and novelty print button-downs were layered under some pretty impressive suiting, including a lilac corduroy blazer with matching carpenter pants. It was a fresh way of injecting the classic Wall Street trope with young, feminine energy. There was a remarkably modern sense for sustainability woven into the tailoring, too, with a basket weave blue tartan suit made from recycled plastic bottles. Clearly there’s more to this label than disposable, pretty pink hoodies.
16 February 2018
She’s a girl who speaks to girls: We know that about Ashley Williams. Underlying her work are shared references affirming the complicated business of growing up to womanhood without quite wanting to leave childish, playful things behind. Her summer show brought her gang together again—Georgia May Jagger, Lili Sumner, and designer-artist Claire Barrow walked for her, against the backdrop of a set which included lime net curtains, fluffy stuffed toys, and a table arrangement of crystals.The substance of the clothing wasn’t complicated—Williams does accessible dresses, occasionally trimmed with a bit of marabou, ’80s New Wave–ish tailoring, zebra prints, corseted tops, and high-waisted track pants. There’s fun, and a sense of emotional damage somewhere—‘Paranoia’ prints; hair clips which read ‘Hate’ and ‘Love’; ‘Ecstasy’ in a heart on a sweater. If Williams didn’t break any new ground, it was what her friendship group, which stretches from London to L.A., wants to wear.
15 September 2017
There were lots of sweats on the runway at the Ashley Williams show in London tonight. No news there, right? But think about that: Not so long ago, inserting sweatpants and hoodies into the context of a fashion show would be considered a subversive act. You could say the same of printed slogans, another Williams leitmotif. Which raises the question, one Williams and many other designers seem to be asking this season: Whatwouldconstitute a radical fashion gesture, at a moment that certainly seems to call for one?Britain is being buffeted by many of the same social and political currents as the United States, and in her show notes, Williams sounded notes of anxiety that felt unhappily familiar to a visiting American. Does one respond to the present circumstance by partying or with paranoia? The oscillation between those two poles was an interesting theme to explore, though it must be said that Williams’s take was a touch polite, her partying repped by beaded fringe, tropical florals, bare midriffs, and plaid items with a whiff of schoolgirl-playing-hooky attitude, and the paranoia, meanwhile, expressed most directly in the phrasesmiseryandsave the planetemblazoned here and there on the clothes. There were just-fine looks and better ones, like the balloon-sleeve blouses; Williams’s kicky new bouffant pants, done in denim or plaid; and the fisherman sweater with a colorful digital graphic woven into the knit. (More of that last idea would have been welcome.)As a general matter, though, you got the sense here that Williams was struggling—earnestly—to find a fashion language sufficient to convey her heightened emotions of all kinds. And to provoke. The most suggestively radical gesture on this runway, though, was a semi-accidental one. Cowboys were a subtheme of this show and many of the looks were paired with the iconic, all-American felted chapeau. Every so often, Williams would set a cowboy hat atop a sweatshirt hood worn high on the head, a bit like a hijab. If sweats on the runway are going to challenge people’s expectations now, that sort of juxtaposition is the way to go.
17 February 2017
Ashley Williamsis one of the most popular designers in London. Popular in the high school sense: As the front row at her show this evening attested, yet again, Williams runs with a crowd of cool girls, the kind of streetwise squaddies who provoke intense FOMO in everyone who follows them on Snapchat. Williams’s best collections, like her squad-inspired outing last season, induce that old feeling of wanting to be effortlessly with-it enough to nab an invite to that party.The high school analogy felt particularly apt this season, inasmuch as Williams was harkening back to her teenage years. The collection paid loose homage to her schoolgirl crush, River Phoenix, a boy as pretty as any girl, who robbed the world of his unique mix of insouciance, grit, and elegance when he overdosed in 1993. To make the teenage thing even plainer, Williams designed her catwalk to look like an adolescent’s messy bedroom—and the clothes she sent down that catwalk matched the set in willful ersatz-ness. Now, it’s perfectly fine for helter-skelter teenage aesthetics to serve as a reference for a show, but it really doesn’t work as an organizing principle. The magpie effect Williams was chasing began to seem like an excuse, made in advance, for a lack of design focus. There were some very fine looks in this collection, but they were nearly overshadowed by the items that seemed tossed off, or thrown in in the name of randomness.This would have been a stronger outing had Williams tightened her edit, and sharpened her exploration of three key themes. The first, her calling card, were the pieces emblazoned with skater-ish graphics—a naughty angel pattern, the word “haircut,” a repeat of the phrase “I heart girls, I heart boys.” The second core concept was the tailoring: boxy blazers in deadpan check or vivid florals which were paired with matching ultra-minis or boyish trousers. The third, and best, of the ideas here were the pieces featuring muscular pouf sleeves: The canny cut and suave finish of these garments proved what Williams is capable of when she’s not skating by on attitude. The high-low fusion she was after came off best in an outfit that matched a silvery pouf-sleeve top with a slim pair of faded jeans. The look had a deadpan grace to it—a sense of “cool,” in a word. Williams needs to be more consistent and disciplined about applying that sensibility, which comes naturally to her.
“Popular” is all well and good for a designer still getting her legs in the fashion industry, but there’s only so far you can go on social capital.
16 September 2016
In an age when best friends show camaraderie by twinning onInstagram, and starlets are happy to bring a crew of gal pals onto the red carpet in place of a boyfriend, the idea of dressing as part of a girl gang is pretty appealing. DesignerAshley Williamshad #SquadGoals in mind when she conceived her latest collection, and she even invited her friend and fellow designer Claire Burrowes to model in the show. After the early aughts talking points of last season, Williams moved her frame of reference to ’80s power dressing. In a sense, she seemed to be posing the question: How does a young woman dress when she’s the leader of the pack?Switching gears from the slip dresses of Spring, Williams sent out her models in suiting with an anarchic twist. The pantsuit that Adwoa Aboah wore to open the show was covered in a provocative Taser print by Fergus Purcell, the same artist who worked on the popular Marc byMarc Jacobsslogan prints for Katie Hillier and Luella Bartley. The more feminine subversive impulses were the strongest, though, like a ruffled blouse printed with doodles of pierced ears, or a varsity jacket that had the word “tazer” emblazoned on the front in a skater-style font. Williams’s boyfriend is Lev Tanju, the cofounder of London skate brand Palace, and clearly some of his skater-boy charms have rubbed off on her. It was a good influence here, especially in the mix of mismatched diamanté earrings, pinafore dresses, and graphic tees that had riot-grrrl attitude. Streetwear is something that cool millennial women have grown up with, and Williams is making the case that she can look grown-up, sexy, and still be a rebel at heart.
23 February 2016
It’s all well and good to talk about the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, but there’s a generation of young designers who were raised on Y2K values. The trashy, moody bad girls of the turn of the millennium loomed large inAshley Williams’s imagination for Spring, a motley crew of fictional and real-life characters that started with Emily the Strange and ended with Avril Lavigne.The 27-year-old designer has a soft spot for a skater’s wardrobe—her boyfriend, Palace Skateboards founder Lev Tanju, sat in the front row—although this season the vibe was more Camden Market goth doesBlack Swan, and PVC trenchcoats came emblazoned with a tag that read “Ashley Williams Ballet School” and were worn with black tutus, demented tiaras, and fishnet tights.That unapologetically brazen attitude also speaks to the aesthetic of a certain stylish bad gal of our times, and you can imagine Rihanna strutting her stuff in one of Williams’s “No Code of Conduct” tees or in her slip dress printed with flies and laced up in neon straps. After an age of buttoned-up minimalism, it’s an exuberant and cheeky sexiness that cool young girls can relate to right now. The striped and pointy elf hats, though, are perhaps a tad too bad to be good.
22 September 2015
So if J.W. Anderson has supplanted the '70s security of those who like their consensus decade-based (by taking us into the trashily glam '80s), where does that put Ashley Williams? In this collection, the frighteningly young designer (cue intimations of mortality) seemed to view the beginnings of grunge, the late '80s and the early '90s, as a historical era worth reviving. That gurning-guy graphic that recurred throughout was specially commissioned, based on the skate stickers old-timers used to whack on our decks—hers were just a little reminiscent of the Santa Cruz skateboard company's snarling face. L7's "Pretend We're Dead" and The Primitives' "Crash" were the soundtrack. There was a sample of the trailer ofStar Trek IV,too. Wow, that was a really awful movie.Underneath this nichely evocative seasoning, Williams' prime mandate was indie-touched party gear: a black, strapless, zipped tube dress came patterned with her patches and a deep-neckline PVC dress was infantilized by the yellow-haired grinning loon on the swollen-armed printed shirt beneath it. Williams sometimes mined a fruitful friction between prim silhouette and shouty delivery—pink shearlings, that PVC insinuation, the odd crystalline flash on a dress. There were flashes on hoodies, too, but quietly, above leggings with circular cutouts at the knee. This focused collection did its own thing, well.
24 February 2015
Ashley Williams' first solo show epitomized what London fashion week is all about: young talents doing their own thing and doing it well. Williams is a graduate of Lulu Kennedy's Fashion East, which has helped kick off the careers of such designers as Jonathan Saunders, Craig Green, and Simone Rocha. It was during Williams' tenure with that initiative that she debuted a range of plush shark handbags, which got the London fashion set talking.For an emerging designer, Williams' front row was pretty impressive—everyone from Sarah Andelman (who stocks the 26-year-old's fashions at Colette) to top editors to It Brits Alexa Chung and Pixie Geldof (both of whom are friends of Williams) turned out to support her. What was more impressive, though, were Williams' clothes. The designer said she was inspired by Vietnamese prostitutes in the '60s who were influenced by American culture. "They'd make imitations of popular American clothes and get it slightly wrong," she said. This translated into kitschy spaghetti-strap dresses, tops embellished with crystal bras (Williams was inducted into the Swarovski Collective this season), and color-blocked, '60s-style day frocks with geisha details. A few pieces were painstakingly hand-beaded (like a maxi dress with a cool Coca-Cola motif—Williams has forged a partnership with the brand), and many of the garments screamed funny phrases. A black and gray sweater had "Hassle" in a circle with a line through it printed on each breast, and a beaded white skirt featured a cartoon depicting a shoe heading for a girl's rear. It read "Kick Ass."The collection was balanced—it offered women everything from knitwear and trousers to slinky dresses and printed blouses. There were lots of feminine elements here (pink, sparkle, and ladylike little shoes, a collaboration with Red or Dead), but the clothes also emitted a toughness, which Williams magnified via a series of long-sleeved T-shirts. These were worn underneath almost all of Williams' sleeveless numbers, and, down their arms, graffiti letters spelled out "Zuburbz" (like suburbs, but with Zs), or Coca-Cola in Chinese. "I think they harden the dresses up a bit," offered Williams of the T-shirts' role. "It's also just how I would dress. I like to dress things down." She was wearing one of said tops with a pair of gray pants backstage.
Thanks to Williams' famous friends, as well as a heavy-hitting list of retailers (in addition to Colette, VFiles, Selfridges, Joseph, and Joyce Hong Kong stock her collection), it's safe to say this up-and-comer has some serious potential. But what really makes Williams' star shine is that she does whatever the hell she wants, and she does it well.
14 September 2014