Last year I pulled a "Woe is me!" act over how I felt like I was the exact opposite of an 'Ellery' girl whilst being inexplicably drawn to the whole aesthetic that ex-Russh girl Kym Ellery has created for her namesake brand, which has now taken off from young fledgling label flying towards becoming a proper business. Whenever I stop to absorb the campaign imagery, the dramatic settings and decadence of the clothes ultimately draws me in, overriding the undeniable sensual attitude that courses through the Ellery spirit. Effectively, Ellery turns the old cliche about Rosemount Australian Fashion Week being a sex-fest of minis, legs and boobs on its head and plays it to her advantage, presenting an altogether more complicated, detailed and luxurious study of sexy - exactly the sort I fall head over heels for but can never work out how it translates onto my own unsexy, slovenly self.
However, for her latest collection 'The Second Marriage', inspired by the 1963 David Hockney painting of the same name, the coupling of models that came parading out at the White Rabbit Gallery was an altogether more grown-up vision of the carefree, wild-spirited Ellery incarnations of previous seasons. There was a sense of propriety instilled in the mostly elongated dresses, the often oversized jackets and yet at the same time, there was something magical about it all that transported you to another world, which made Ellery stand out at RAFW as a collection that staunchly didn't look to the oft-repeated easy-breezy, casual silhouettes for inspiration. The colours and textures of Hockney's painting informed the palette especially evident in the opening peach print, painted with drifting apparitions of lace. When rendered on a loose long coat and clustered with diamante at the back of the collar and in very selective parts, it definitely made for a mesmerising beginning...
Dissect the couples though and pieces such as sheer knitwear (a new area of development for Ellery), paired here with gold,coach shoe outlet, refine and enhance the stable collection of sexy dresses...
I was trying to read into the couplings to see whether there were any masculine and feminine aspects that particularly shone through but in most cases, the couples had their own matching theme going on that only when lined up at the end could you see how one leads to another. The couples walking towards me at a slow-ish pace, whilst accompanied by performance poetry, allowed me to take in the plethora of fabrics that Ellery refuses to compromise on. Seeing it in the showroom to me suggested that Ellery had upped its game in the finish and quality of the garments given that the brand sits in a higher price point than a lot of contemporary Aussie labels. To just talk about fine fabrics though would make Ellery a bit of an unexciting prospect were it not for the fact that she does manage to inject a fantasy element into her work best seen in this pairing of peaked rounded shoulders on pink satin paired with a PVC covered shirt and a corset with a satin peplum skirt. I somehow didn't even question the purpose of this Barbie-soaked couple but along with Ellery's other offerings, just nooded along...
More down-to-earth outfits came in the form of chalky white oversized bikers and capes with layered skirts and flares, a shape that Ellery really played on in her last S/S 11-12 collection...
The fact that this was a famous Aussie celebrity (Jennifer Hawkins) totally passed me by other than I thought she looked red carpet ready. Turns out Ellery dresses Hawkins on a regular basis and I suppose one would mark this dress out as an evolution of Ellery girl to Ellery woman...
You can't see but this yellow brocade is also bonded to lace in the inside and actually a lot of the fabrics have a lot of insider bondings that add hanging weight and a special finish to the garments...
Sparkle is something that I saw creeping into the last spring collection shown at RAFW when I visited her studio and found many interns sparkalising (yes, that's word...) everything. This time round, I felt the glitz was used in a more controlled way - popping up at the back of collars and in dribs and drabs and then in impactful concentrated amounts as seen in this draped boyfriend blazer...
There were two man/woman couplings that saw Ellery dabble into her 'unisex' wear, hesitating to call it menswear as there were only a few pieces.
The print that began the print in peachy innocence ended the show swathed in black...
The collection got its final approval tick and made a great deal more sense afterwards when there was a complete line-up at the ground floor of the gallery. Once you get all the silhouettes together, it's quite difficult to pigeonhole this Ellery collection into neat boxes - ladylike, sexy, restrained, magical, whimsical, feminine, elegant - touches of all of those adjectives and something more...
The world of Ellery has now been consecrated in print as show-goers all got a first copy of the Ellery Gazette. Brand/label-produced printed matter is something that I'm always obsessing over, applauding younger designers especially as I think it's always interesting and inspiring to see the world from the perspective of designer as opposed to editor. With Kym's background in Russh magazine, it stands to reason that she can pull a zine out of the bag and this was actually more like a hefty magazine with introductions to the Ellery team, the people that inspire her as well as interpretations of her work in editorials...
The inspiration images arranged over a few spreads are especially wonderful. Celine obviously do a brilliant job of handing inspiration books out at their shows but alas, they also come with a stern warning at the end, telling people not to reproduce or photograph these images which smacks down the innate blogger in me. No such warning in Ellery's case...
Even Kym had to laugh at the amount of tits and arse that appeared in the magazine after editorials from photographers such as Holly Blake and Darren McDonald came back with... erm... a lot of tits and arse... after being asked to interpret the Ellery girl...
I also loved these travel images contributed by film maker and personal frind of Kym, Kinga Burza, whose short film Candy I'm looking forward to seeing!
I came away this time round thinking that embodying the Ellery spirit wasn't this huge challenging mountain that I previously thought it was. This fall 2011 'Tulieries Armour' jacket made of an iridescent lilac Italian brocade, thankfully doesn't require any sumptuous bouncing bosoms underneath and with its exaggerated sculpted shape at the back and signature zippers and chains at the sleeves, I'm more than happy to bung a flimsy layers underneath that contrast with the jacket's ability to 'pull' everything together...
(Worn with Sunspel t-shirt, Topshop Boutique dress, vintage white bloomers)
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