"I'm keeping the silhouette simple—classic, tailored, angular—so you can pile on the opposite," said Matthew Williamson of his Resort collection. "A 50:50 mix of these extremes is the best." A classic black cocktail dress with a sinister torrent of dark crystals and midnight blue beading curving down its front made a pretty convincing argument. So did a simple shift whose hem was dripping with gold paillettes. But when Williamson talked about how his 15th anniversary in business had refreshed his design DNA, it was the juicy corals and oranges, the cool mints and purples that the eye was immediately drawn to, because they were the color scheme of the summer-holidays-in-Ibiza dream that Williamson evoked so successfully at the start of his career. His easy "minimalist" shapes—caftans, shifts, draped columns—did that resort palette justice. He also offered the same silhouettes in a dark blue-toned urban palette with python-print accents. The most insinuating piece in the collection was a strapless column in an inky floral silk chiffon—15 years of professional and personal growth in one dramatic dress.
