The protagonist of Ashley Williams’s spring 2026 collection finds the beauty in the banality of her small, provincial town. The London designer had been thinking about systems of care and feelings of contentment—“finding purpose in what you have, not what you want.” She basks in the glow of her neighbor’s smiles across their pruned hedges, and pays tribute to the town’s nurses, soldiers, builders, and factory workers.
A pitched down version of Lorde’s “Mood Ring,” P!nk, and the Corrs soundtracked the bobbing purple rinsed bouffants, acid yellow mullets, and Barbie Dreamhouse tiara-ed heads of models that paraded through the two top floor rooms of The ICA. It was a textural melange of orthopedic padded belts and bulbous velcro shoes, high-shine coral pajama pants under slip skirts, languid jersey bodysuits, and white lace-trimmed footless tights. White collar-wear and school uniforms were recast in ice-cream scoop colors and sickly yellows, as well as Williams’s signature ‘I <3 ME’ print, anime girls and AI cats, and cartoons of pill bottles, dogs, and dish soap. Checked skirt suits and drop waist dresses in the aforementioned patterns were Williams’s take on the zany Milanese lady, moments that build upon Williams’s quiet tailoring skills—Prada pops an edible.
Accessories were also lovely and delightful, and caused some tittering from one room to the next. Phones were raised for close-up shots of a floral toilet paper roll worn as a bangle, icy blue tights as gloves, rosette-adorned safety glasses, and a knitted hot water bottle. Williams collaborated with experimental jewelry studio Yvmin to create pink and cutesy Baroque window pendants, chair rings, and crowns that looked like four-poster beds—like a young girl combining her parents’s wardrobe with the contents of her playroom. It was an otherworldly mudlark through girlhood.
As editors and alt-pop girls in top-to-toe Ashley Williams outfits left the front row and descended the spiral stairs to leave, they were handed fruit juice swirled with star and heart-shaped boba pearls. Williams first showed at London Fashion Week as part of Fashion East’s fall 2013 show, and Fashion East marked its 25th anniversary this year. After more than a decade in the fashion industry, the world of Ashley Williams only holds you closer, more tenderly.
