Margins: Bethany Cordwell
The tyranny of distance has long kept the heady heights of Hollywood A-listers from even the most senior of Australian designers, and yet rising star Bethany Williams has achieved the seemingly insurmountable at an astonishingly young age. From Queensland to Queen Bey, Bethany talks to VAULT about her unique and wonderful world following a year of unprecedented success.
Image credit: Waste Age-Hands Creature Model: Tayla Langley (she/ her) wearing pink and purple hands creature made from repurposed materials and items- bed sheets, clothing and discarded fabric. Photo: Lauren Lang (she/her)
At just 26 years of age, Cairns-born creative multi hyphenate Bethany Cordwell became one of Australia’s most talked about emerging fashion and costume designers when a Covid lockdown project was plucked from obscurity by Beyonce Knowles’ styling team – appearing in imagery for the global artist’s long-awaited Renaissance album.
After graduating in 2018 from the Queensland University of Technology’s fashion design degree (alongside 2015 alumni-turned-Jean-Paul-Gaultier-collaborator Michaela Stark), Cordwell has secured enviable opportunities as a result of her work’s unique aesthetic and unconventional materiality. In a professional space that often demands strict pigeon-holing, this passionate visual polymath has already worked across sculpture, costume and fashion, combining a strong interest in sustainability and construction techniques with signature, bold designs. Self-described as a “soft sculptural artist,” her work continues to push boundaries of material,
technique and construction.
Cordwell first gained recognition with her graduate collection Waste Age, which brought to life the realities of mass production and consumerism as towering, stylised monsters constructed from donated clothing – a joyful and bombastic representation of the deeply sinister concerns preoccupying the designer’s final year of study. Both elevating and obscuring the wearer, and drawing parallels with the practice of British textile artist Daisy Collingridge, Waste Age allowed for experimentation within the perceived limitations of fashion design – pushing boundaries of silhouette and wearability with grotesque-yet-cuddly amorphous beings. As interest in her first public offering grew, Cordwell got her first taste of international recognition with the Beca Sustainability Award at the 2019 iD International ... Subscribe to read this article in full
