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-tinged kawaii; 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.
