This collection was 95% deadstock and 100% dress up: Kym Ellery scoured her archives and those of her suppliers for the raw materials for this catalogue of archetypes. “It’s about exploring different personalities, the different characters you can assume,” said the designer from her new showroom in Paris’s 11th arrondissement. “It was about diving into who you are today, but also who you were yesterday and who you can be tomorrow, using fashion as a way to express yourself.”
According to her notes, the types Ellery cast through clothing were “the lady, the cowgirl, the espionne, the dominatrix, the equestrian, and the honorable” and during the chat she added “bad ski bunny.” While the corresponding looks worked as costume they were also easily deconstructable for less specific roleplay —or mix-and-match-able to enable the evocation of more layered personalities. A cotton Western shirt with stylized piping would have been at ease beneath a spy’s gabardine trench cinched with an elasticated leather belt. That Agamemnon’s Mask chestplate/burial mask—a sign of the “honorable”—was perfectly transferable to the “dominatrix” fishnet/mesh vest worn north of croc-patterned leather pants.
Unshackling the collection from its conceit for a sec, this was a confidently concise overview of this designer’s repertoire of distinctly specific twists on the canonical categories of womenswear. Tying it all back together again—then tuning into Look 16—this was another fun episode of Ellery in Paris.
