Half-kidding, Kym Ellery calls her resort outing her “desert island collection.” That’s because “these are clothes to live and die in,” she explains.
Now, after three and a half years living in Paris, Ellery has finally made the complete transition to Europe, staffing up her studio and shifting production from her native Australia to Italy, mainly.
That opens up a lot of new possibilities, fabrics- and logistics-wise, and Ellery is clearly having fun mixing things up, pairing crinkled, fine-knit canary sleeves with a beige fabric overcoat, for example. She used the same color scheme to make a case for the return of the stirrup pant (it also comes in black faux leather) and turned it sideways on a horizontally striped dress trimmed in fringe with a lashing of rhinestones.
Playing with shine is another one of Ellery’s loves: She has a burgeoning jewelry line (the metallic daisy bra will probably travel to fashion shoots all over the place) and has just developed metallic rhinestone pulls for her ’70s-inspired separates. Elsewhere, she seized on a piece of op art from her childhood bedroom, transposing it onto a wide metallic wave on an oversized blush pantsuit.
If Ellery’s base relies on her for any one thing, it’s statement-making tops. This season, the designer delivered with Renaissance-worthy shoulders that were held up with chunky metallic chains—complete with a corset belt and finer chains at the waist—or cascaded into her signature elongated sleeves. Practical? Not if you’re living on a desert island. Dramatic? Definitely.
