Art and fashion diluted at Bethany Williams SS22

Bethany Williams, one of the designers who has best connected with the spirit of our times, presents an ethical collection that goes far beyond fashion. With circularity and sustainability at the creative core, “All Our Stories” continues her work started in 2019 with The Magpie Project, a charity that supports homeless women and children.

Illustrator Melissa Kitty, of Bethany’s team, leads a series of storytelling projects with the organisation’s families to inspire and weave this collection. “What we observed in the storytelling workshops was that the moral of each story was always about kindness, caring and mutual respect,” Williams writes in her exhibition notes. “These traits, while important in childhood, have the same meaning in adult life.”

Bethany once again constructs the proposal with book scraps, now transformed into textiles by the Italian program San Patrignano. Within this artistic paradise, we find a series of silhouettes inspired by the V&A Museum of Childhood’s archive of garments.

Suits with matador jackets take their cue from 19th-century children’s skeleton suits, alongside corsets made from fruit packaging waste and patchwork coats. Within that line, six garments formed part of Williams‘ entry for the Woolmark Award final, using waste merino wool printed organically in Peckham.

FASHION AS A SOCIAL TOOL

The SS22 menswear collection is showcased through a fashion film that captures the families of The Magpie Project inside the empty rooms of the Bethnal Green institution, appearing alongside poet Eno Mfon, who narrates the piece.

All Our Stories, which has just won the BFC/Vogue Fashion Fund, is further proof of how to change the narrative in fashion in times of climate and social crisis.

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