Grace Wales Bonner cements position as British menswear's most exciting new talent at London Collections Men

This was Wales Bonner's first solo catwalk show at the capital's men's fashion showcase
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Karen Dacre13 June 2016

A twenty-five year old fashion designer from South East London has emerged as British menswear's most exciting new talent.

Staging her first solo catwalk show at the capital's biannual men's fashion showcase, Grace Wales Bonner - a graduate of Central Saint Martin’s - cemented her title as the industry's new star attraction at a showcase attended by some of the leading names in the business.

Intrigued by the buzz which has surrounded Bonner since her graduate collection scooped the coveted L’Oreal Talent Award in 2014, fashion players including key buyers from some of the world's most prestigious department stores, arrived at the designer's chosen location - a salubrious salon in Knightsbridge - eager to decipher if this young talent was worth all the fuss.

Few left disappointed having witnessed a polished, exquisitely created collection which saw Bonner - who honed her craft under talent initiative Fashion East - shake off her rising star status to become a unforgettable designer with a very bright future ahead.

Grace Wales Bonner 
Giovanni Giannoni/WWD/Rex

Bonner's specialty is gender fluid fashion which draws heavily on black sexuality and identity and her latest collection is a melting point of precisely that.

But her signature aesthetic, an approach previously showcased at low key presentations and at Fashion East shows at which Bonner shared the limelight with other designers, had been scaled up ahead of her debut solo perfomance. Notably, through the inclusion of supreme quality tailoring which looks set to become key to her repertoire.

Smooth shouldered jackets with voluminous sleeves and neatly pinched waists combined with choir boy ruffles, crochet collars and glittering bead work in a collection entitled Ezekiel and inspired by the the crowning of the Ethiopian emperor in 1930.

For Bonner, the daughter of a English mother and a Jamaican father, the objective is always to celebrate her hybrid heritage in a formal and refined way. For the clothes on offer, this meant frock coats and romantic ruffles trimmed with intentionally kitsch palm motifs and oversized hoop earrings, reminiscent of Ethiopian tribalwear, presented alongside croc effect clutch bags.

"It was a clashing of different things" said the designer after the show, "I wanted the Caribbean influences to feel like clichés but I wanted the collection to be more formal, more refined, more restrained. The tailoring is more European".

The result is a collection that includes some of the most exciting craftsmanship the British luxury market has seen in some time - and a new chapter for British menswear in which gender becomes a much more fluid proposition. Where Bonner is concerned, clothes should not be attributed to a gender but to the individual who wears them. Accordingly, men and women modelled the designer’s latest menswear offering when it was unveiled on the catwalk yesterday.

It's an approach that has already earned recognition - most notably from the British Fashion Council which awarded Bonner its emerging menswear designer award in 2015. Despite having just a handful of collections behind her, Bonner has also seen her work presented in the Serpentine Gallery and at the V&A and is among the designers shortlisted for the LVMH prize - an award which could bring a major injection of cash to her growing business.

Bonner was among the most hotly tipped names on a schedule of menswear shows which took place in the capital this weekend. The four day event concludes on Monday following a catwalk show from New York leather giants Coach.

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