During lockdown Kym Ellery took the opportunity to look, really look, at the 16 collections she has presented at breakneck pace since transporting her brand to Paris four years ago. This inspection, she recounted via a WhatsApp call from her summer sanctuary in Sardinia, led her to some existentially confronting questions.
These included; did she want to go on designing at all? Then came; if Ellery continued, how would it change? And how would she characterize the upshot of these contemplations? The result, much of it crafted with deadstock from past collections, is a portfolio of clothing in which Ellery worked to retain the essence of her aesthetic while stripping away the superfluous. Preserved was her penchant for full skirted dresses lent difference with asymmetric hemlines or empoweringly strong shoulders, but presented in a tightly arranged range of fabrications spanning leather and cotton.