PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIA PONCE, PONCE PHOTOGRAPHY
CREATIVE DIRECTION BY D. GRAHAM KOSTIC | WRITTEN BY ELLE EICHINGER
Bubbly and bright-pink-lipsticked, Ashley Scott is a woman of the world, possessing a genuine excitement for fashion and beauty matched only by her dual passions of travel and charity. The born-and-raised Chicagoan and designer of Drapes jewelry visited Japan some years back—and the trip changed her life. “I haven’t been the same since,” she says. “I felt like that was the real world; that is where it’s all happening.” (Trips like this are what inspire her jewelry line; Drapes bears the unmistakable influence of world cultures.) It was on another trip, this one to NYC, that she picked up the vintage embellished dress she wore to our shoot (which she had cut shorter to suit her eclectic-cool style); and it was while in Romania with the Toyota Creative Lounge that she met the editor of a Romanian magazine. Their relationship continued, and the editor recently reached out to Ashley again, asking her to donate jewelry pieces for an auction benefiting children’s charities. Ashely’s answer was a resounding yes: “If anyone asks me to donate for a cause, I’m down to do it for sure. I just love giving back in that way.” She has donated pieces for similar causes in the states as well.
Speaking of her jewelry pieces: they’re bold, vibrant, and, at times, heavy. “But I don’t think my pieces are that crazy, where you have to dumb down your outfit,” she says. “They just complement it.” The piece she wore for our shoot was from her newest collection, a necklace of heavy metal pieces modeled after the pieces that hold up drapery—an overt nod to the name of her label. Though she claims simple style, Ashley was all too ready to pile the metal jewelry on top of her already-embellished top—and she completely rocked it (we never doubted her, of course). No matter where she’s working or what she’s doing, style is never sacrificed. “My style expresses what I’m feeling each day,” she says. “I always used to say my style was a certain thing, but now I don’t like to put a label on it. It should just be fun; you don’t have to over think style.” We couldn’t agree more.