Following a few years lying fallow, Ashley Williams fired up her label again to return to London’s runway scene this evening. As ever, and possibly more than ever, she filled her collection with quirky details that contrasted the cute with the coruscating and the sacred with the profane. Why were her models sometimes carrying rune-etched wizard’s crooks or costume-store dwarf axes? What were the numbers all about at the end? Why Jesus?
After answering a few of these inquiries backstage, Williams delivered the metaphor that encapsulates her broader way of working: “This is how I describe it in a way that makes sense to me. Imagine a charm bracelet: Individually when you separate them, all the charms don’t make any sense. But together they’re a collection of ideas and experiences that you go through in a period of time.”
The movies Hard to Be a God and The Seventh Seal were two prime sources in Williams’s episodic diary of fascination. She imagined 16th-century face masks as facial-recognition blockers (per the release) on “I Heart Me” hoodies and above rare–for–London Fashion Week day dresses, and recast linen shifts made after medieval shapes. Customized footwear included boots by Ugg, which also bankrolled the Fashion East-overseen bursary that in part enabled Smith to stage her return for this show. Baby knits were worn as hats; T-shirts featured in utero human embryos (Williams reckoned this was because many of her friends participated in the COVID-era baby-making opportunity.) Her cutesy bow motif gift wrapped many of these allusive and elusive looks.
Some of the illustrations and writing were created in workshops at the Gate, an arts space for people with learning disabilities in London. “It’s about trying to get rid of the barrier in art: Art should be boundaryless,” said Williams. Her garments are strips of litmus colored by her experiences, impulses, and instinct.
