Backstage at her first show during the haute couture, Australian designer Kym Ellery, who’s been based in Paris for two years now, was discussing working with the artisans who helped her create the collection. Ellery had asked the head seamstress, “Is it couture?” and the woman had replied that, yes, it was indeed. Ellery might have been seeking affirmation on the level of craftsmanship on a jacket—and perhaps, looking at the bigger picture here, her aspirations for herself as a designer and for her label—yet it is a pretty pertinent question, looming large over this debut. What is couture, indeed? Sixty percent of what she put on the runway at the École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts on Tuesday afternoon was strictly intended as such; that is, made-to-order, fitted directly onto the client, virtually unique.
The collection, which was inspired by the notion of collecting and curating, dipped magpie-like from the work of Mies van der Rohe to the heiress-gone-gaga chic of Peggy Guggenheim. It was filled with things like a claret trapunto satin blanket-cape over a pink oversize trouser suit, and a lean black-and-white 1970s-feel coat with a black bow half-belt, worn with flared black pants. A tweedy jacket, naked at the back save for the ties that held it in place, came atop a billowing black ball skirt that looked like something a punky reincarnation of Dovima might wear; the same skirt morphed into a more formal gown at one point, too. Ellery claims there’s a real demand for those kinds of pieces from her.
No one should fault designers for wanting to think big, push themselves to take risks, and all those other things we keep urging them to do. Ellery’s positive, upbeat attitude to throwing herself into producing haute couture is admirable. And then there’s the fact that she has developed a loyal global following for her brand of quirky, cultivated dressing that places the idiosyncrasies and foibles of women at its heart.
In this she’s traversing the same territory that Phoebe Philo did in her decade at Céline. There have been comparisons drawn between the work of these two designers, and to her credit Ellery takes mention of referencing in her stride. “The same way that some architects reference other architects, and some musicians reference other musicians?” she said, laughing, then went on to say, “We’re living in a digital age, where it’s incredibly saturated. Designers have been put into this rat race to create all the time. It would be naive to think that sometimes things don’t look like something else. I’m not ashamed to say I have some fashion images on my board that are from other designers, but I’m not creating a whole collection around them. In the course of research, you see something old that someone had referenced recently, and think, ‘Oh that’s where it came from.’”
She’s not wrong. Plenty of designers reference other designers, including Philo herself; remember the Geoffrey Beene coat? Yet in Philo’s hands, her references came out as something else, something which managed to transcend the sum of its parts. That wasn’t quite the case here. When Ellery first started out, she offered a great array of wardrobe basics that were anything but basic; super-wearable and easy, they had sharp and interesting twists. Those ultra-flared pants she did from the get-go are a case in point. Moving to Paris, competing on that tough and unforgiving stage, isn’t easy. But it would be great if Ellery would strip away some of the design bells and whistles, couture or not, and bring it back to pieces that speak more clearly to the way she started out. Given the space left by Philo’s exit from Céline, there are going to be plenty of women who’ll be crying out for them.
