Chesney Day Williams’ collection, created as a requirement to participate in the Africa Fashion International organized showcase at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Johannesburg proved yet again that new talents from South Africa are miles ahead of their contemporaries across Africa. Incorporating many of the locally sourced elements indigenous to the country, the label’s clothes project a refreshing bohemian ease.
Williams takes two unlikely bed partners and pairs them together. The collection is heavy on leather, dyed in a myriad of colours and used as symmetric patchwork and piping. Juxtaposed with the hard unweilding leather is intricate crotchet work, worked into elaborate white florals. These provide a softer feminine edge to the hard cowgirl aesthetic that characterizes most of the collection.
Williams also works extensive fringe into the collection, providing much needed movement to the stiff leather. The best pieces in the showcase happen when she mixes all three elements; a cropped short and halter midriff blouse done in crotchet with asymmetric leather hemming and extensive fringe is a look executed with such precision that we are sure it caught the attention of every buyer present in the audience. The label’s sleeveless floor length shift is just as good.
Chesney Day Williams’s woman is one who is just as comfortable on a horse as she is on a runway, with a wardrobe that reflects this duality.
Photo Credits
Simon Deiner/SdrPhoto
Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Johannesburg
Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton, Gauteng, South Africa.
