How original designs and selected pieces become part of one recognisable wardrobe.
By Eliane Haddad, founder and designer of ELLY
A coherent wardrobe does not require every garment to come from the same designer. It requires a point of view.
A recent Vogue conversation between the people behind @OldCeline and @CurrentCeline considered how distinct creative periods can remain connected without producing identical clothes. The conversation looked at recurring attitudes towards silhouette, colour, tailoring and styling, and at the broader way of seeing that can make a fashion identity recognisable through change.
ELLY has a different structure, but the discussion raises a relevant question: how can original designs and pieces selected from other makers retain their distinct origins while still belonging to the same collection? For me, the connection comes from the consistency of judgment applied to both.
The collection brings together original pieces I design and pieces I personally select from Italy. These are two distinct creative responsibilities, yet they meet within the same wardrobe and are guided by the same understanding of the woman for whom ELLY exists.
Designing begins with an idea
When I design an original ELLY piece, I begin with the garment itself and the idea I want it to express. I consider its silhouette, fabric, colour, proportion, movement and detail, then work through the relationship between those elements as the design develops.
The kimono is one of the clearest examples of this continuing design language at ELLY. It is not limited to one fabric, one season or one way of dressing. Across the collection, the form has appeared in sheer and fluid interpretations, lace, cotton, expressive prints and fabrics with greater weight and structure.
Returning to the kimono does not mean repeating the same garment. Each version begins with a different material and a different purpose. A translucent surface creates a different relationship with the clothes beneath it than cotton or jacquard. A longer, more structured kimono carries itself differently from a light open layer. Print, sleeve width, length and proportion can change its character while the openness of the silhouette remains recognisable.
This is why the kimono has become meaningful within ELLY. It offers continuity without sameness and allows me to revisit a familiar form through changing fabrics, moods and seasons.
Curation is also a creative responsibility
Curation begins at a different stage. The design already exists, but the decision to bring it into ELLY requires more than finding something attractive.
I study how a garment is cut, how its fabric behaves and whether the finish supports its design. I consider what it adds to the collection, how it relates to pieces already there and whether it offers the woman a genuine possibility rather than simply filling a category.
The Italian clothing selection is deliberately broad, extending across tailoring, dresses, trousers, knitwear and shirts because I am not searching for one repeated look. I may respond to the line of a jacket, the proportion of a trouser, the movement of a dress or the way a detail gives a simpler piece its identity. Alongside this clothing edit, ELLY brings together selected Italian accessories and original accessories I design.
My role is not merely to decide whether an individual garment is good enough. It is to shape the relationships across the collection: what deserves space, what introduces a new direction, what can live naturally beside an original ELLY design and what should be left out. Selection includes refusal as much as inclusion, and the strength of an edit depends on both.
A collection is built through relationships
Original design and curation should remain clearly distinguished, but they do not need to exist in separate visual worlds.
An expressive ELLY kimono may be worn with restrained Italian tailoring. A selected dress can take on a different character beside an original handmade ELLY accessory. A sharply constructed jacket can introduce definition next to a softer piece without diminishing either one.
The aim is not to make every garment appear to share a single origin. It is to build a wardrobe in which each piece can keep its own identity while contributing to a recognisable sensibility.
That sensibility is found in the relationships between proportion, movement, colour and character. It is also found in what the collection avoids. A piece may be beautiful on its own and still feel wrong for ELLY if it leaves no room for interpretation, feels tied to a passing moment or only works when styled in one prescribed way.
The woman gives the collection its final character
The point of view behind ELLY guides the collection, but it does not prescribe one finished image of the woman wearing it.
The same kimono can feel expressive over an evening look, relaxed with trousers or more protective and substantial when interpreted in a heavier fabric. A selected Italian jacket can be worn as part of formal tailoring or used to give structure to something softer. Jewellery, footwear and the woman’s own manner of wearing the piece continue the creative process after the garment leaves the collection.
That freedom matters to me. Clothes should bring character to a woman’s wardrobe without deciding her identity for her.
More than a label
The Vogue conversation raises a question for ELLY: how can different creative approaches remain connected? For me, the answer is not found in making every piece look alike. It is found in the continuity of judgment.
Original ELLY designs carry my creative direction from the first idea. Pieces curated from Italy arrive through a different process: I consider what each one contributes, how it speaks to the rest of the collection and whether it belongs within the ELLY point of view. The responsibilities are different, but both shape the identity of the collection.
A point of view is more than a label. It is visible in the forms we return to, the differences we welcome, the relationships we create and the decisions about what belongs.
It is the consistency of what we notice, what we choose and what we decide to leave out.