Grace Wales Bonner’s collections have long presented tours of Black cultural perspectives, centering esteemed figures like Haile Selassie and Ishmael Reed, exploring diasporic histories, and imagining worlds beyond their limits. Over the past three seasons, the designer—who is known for her rigorous approach to research—doubled down even further, presenting a trilogy dedicated to the cultural and sartorial threads woven between Britain and the Caribbean. “There was a lot of responsibility in those last collections,” she reflected. “But now I feel confident. I’ve been working on this [brand] for nearly six years, and its history, its foundation, has been set. Now I don’t necessarily need to work in the same way. I can be more playful, more light.”
That sentiment was directly visible in a collection that felt like one of her most liberated yet: clothing that riffed off the ideas of self-representation proposed in the 1970s by photographers like the Malian Malick Sidibé and the Burkinabé Sanlé Sory but seemed instinctively rather than historically conceived. “That period of time felt like a turning point in terms of people taking control of the camera—no longer being observed or object but taking ownership of their image,” explained Wales Bonner. “Malick Sidibé’s are the images that started me off wanting to design clothing.” Completing the circle both felt, and appeared, a natural fit.
So patterns from the backdrops that turned up in their portraiture were loosely adapted into the geometric jacquards of a track two-piece or the gradient stripes on cotton skirts. The most literal renditions—the Japanese-inspired floral print of a shirt taken from one of Sory’s subjects and a collaborative reprisal of a T-shirt from the photographer’s archival studio uniforms—slipped neatly into a relaxed array of the ’70s silhouettes that are part of the Wales Bonner vocabulary.
The vibrant nightlife surrounding the collection’s namesake, Volta Jazz—musicians who were regular subjects in Sory’s studio—provided reference points for the spirit of cool eclecticism that pervaded, their staple denim now evolved into crisp-cut dark washes. “In Sory’s photographs, you can see the Afro-Atlantic connections—people wearing Bob Marley T-shirts or ones that come from France. It feels like a dynamic, connected place, and you can feel the influence of different styles of dress, of rock and roll,” Wales Bonner noted. “I think it connects to how we’re living right now—and the kind of ease with which we want to dress.”
The refined insouciance of Sidibé and Sory’s subjects presents a natural parallel with Wales Bonner’s distinct aesthetic; even her most relaxed pieces—the cotton dashikis or her collaboration with Adidas (which continues this season, surely to the delight of many)—always maintain an exacting finesse. As ever, the devil is in the details: a utilitarian denim jacket stitched with handwoven cotton accents made in Burkina Faso; textiles from the country inset into a cowboy-inflected Harrington. “And the denim itself is made in Morocco,” the designer said. “I’m trying to think about how to celebrate craft and making from different places in the world as well.” Where Wales Bonner excels is in quietly crafting those connections, in exploring the cross-pollination—both material and cultural—between different points in time and place. And, as her meticulous focus finds its groove, the result appears entirely harmonious.
