Grace Wales Bonner On Her First Womenswear Collection Crafted Through the Lens of Black Joy, Heritage, and Glamour
Wales Bonner has remained a study in introspection and a slow and steady design journey that is always imbued with an authentic level of oratory storytelling, and with fall 2025 the creative director is continuing to build her brand on solid ground. Without looking to current sartorial shifts focussed on the now, her collections appear at once as if heirlooms that have been treasured for generations, while also unwittingly meeting the moment. See Grace Wales Bonner’s highly successful partnership with Adidas as just one of the examples of her ability to move, rather than be led by the culture.
Her vision for fall 2025 was one which blended “utility and elegance” while celebrating her renowned eclectic style. Approached by the designer as a study in the development of “Pure clothing” according to the press release, the women’s collection mirrored the men’s (shown in Paris in January) in its hybridising of both feminine and masculine elements. An evolution that has been a long time coming as Wales Bonner has remained a favourite amongst its female fans, despite each collection technically facing into the menswear market, her retro-coded tracksuits, heritage-infused tailoring and nuanced artisanal craftwork appeal across the aisle.
The interests of Wales Bonner outside of the, sometimes limiting, sphere of fashion has afforded her the opportunity to enter and be accepted into both art and educational institutions from the Museum of Modern Art’s ‘Artist’s Choice – Spirit Movers’ exhibition in 2023 to her research project with Howard University and its yearbooks which inspired her fall 2024 collection. Her latest collection for fall expands her passion around self-directed study which is then brought to fruition through her seasonal work in and around the Wales Bonner brand.
In the selection of another African-American institution i.e. Theaster Gates, whose “custodianship and critical redeployment of culturally significant Black objects, archives, and spaces as a formal exercise” was a key draw, we again see how Wales Bonner’s collaborative choices are in perfect alignment with her own living archive of cross-cultural signifiers and craftsmanship which the brand is journeying toward.
Titled Selah, along with an exciting expansion of pieces exclusively facing into the Wales Bonner female contingent, there was also the re-shaping of striking portraiture from archival Ebony and Jet magazines featuring black women portrayed and elevated in the guise of glamour for a new generation. Redefining these images to be discovered in a new format i.e via a lived experience, rather than within a static exhibition, the ‘allure’ of these portraits was also channelled into strong occasion statements including opulent fringed dresses in satin and cashmere. References from the contemporary casualwear of the 60s and 70s was also channelled into mini dresses in daisy lace and leather/knit mixes toughened up with the option to layer on biker jackets with Mongolian shearling trims or ‘natural indigo-dyed denim’ crafted with corduroy patches. The implementation of artisanal craft continued in the “multicolour macrame sets” made in India, and the update of mirror work embroidery from the country transformed into metal studs on fine organza shirts and skirts. Knitwear came pre-mended and darned, reminding the wearer of the “gestures and rhythms evident in the process of making” as outlined in the press release.
The ‘Selah cropped T-shirt’ stands out within the fall collection for its amplification of Moneta Sleet Jr’s work in a simple, yet powerful statement. The image itself came courtesy of The Black Image Corporation, which is part of a project conceived by Chicago-based Theaster Gates to preserve the legacy of the Johnson Publishing Company archives, publishers of Jet and Ebony magazines which were committed to the celebration of the black American experience in all of its complexities in postwar America.
Building a Vision of Glamour and Eclecticism with Grace Wales Bonner
During London Fashion Week The Impression sat down with Grace Wales Bonner to preview her fall 2025 collection and gain insight into her womenswear expansion, as well as her collaboration with Theaster Gates and his ‘The Black Image Corporation’ project:
Angela Baidoo: Congratulations on the launch of your fall 2025 collection, can you speak to the way in which you are now platforming Wales Bonner womenswear with a separate lookbook and extended collection?
Grace Wales Bonner: I think womenswear is a really important part of the business so it’s good to be able to show the full expression of the category. I was also thinking about the masculine edges of femininity, as well as utility and pragmatism, but also of a more gentle expression of femininity. I wanted to be able to lean into the toughness of the woman’s character with leather, utility, and the heavier pieces which feels like a type of pragmatism to other parts of the collection and some of the ways that hardware is used. Then thinking about hardware in a decorative way, the lock closures of the outerwear, rivets and studs, communicate a sense of something quite solid, substantial, and tough along with the lightness and fluidity, so it is about those two contrasts within the collection.
Angela Baidoo: Is your female fanbase something that has surprised you, or has this demand always been there?
Grace Wales Bonner: Even from my early collections women bought into the menswear so there has always been that customer there. Now, we are responding to her since it’s been a part of our business that’s been growing, it’s been nice to show a more expansive expression and to show the presence of womenswear within the brand. The approach is also quite personal in the way things feel and the room you have within your clothing, that’s the journey I go on when I’m thinking about womenswear. It’s also a reflection of the people that inspire me and see around me everyday.
Angela Baidoo: And in terms of those inspirations, why was Theaster Gates a focus for you this season?
Grace Wales Bonner: Specifically, we incorporated images from Ebony and Jet from the 70s as we were thinking about glamorous women and the portraiture of these women at the time. There was this effortless beauty and glamour, and we were connecting to that in the collection. Overall, the collection is about visions of these women and their sensuality and grace, in a way it’s less about storytelling and more about emotion and feeling when it comes to my approach to womenswear.
Angela Baidoo: The knitwear pieces within the collection have a mended and darned effect which I think speaks to the customer evolving to a place where they want to love their pieces and take care of them, by treating them as if they were heirloom pieces, was this the intention behind including this detail?
Grace Wales Bonner: I love clothing that has some kind of history to it and we like the idea of giving things a new life or repurposing them. We think about time quite expansively, so we reference different time points whether it’s the 1970s or the 1930s which can overlap, we consider these different senses of time as well as future perspectives. And yes, I think this idea of loving what you have and this devotion to fixing something and mending it through craft is part of our philosophy as a brand.
Angela Baidoo: There were a number of additional collaborations with Crombie and a Savile Row partnership with Anderson and Sheppard on the Calvary uniform. How did these partnerships come about and how did you find the process of sourcing within the UK?
Grace Wales Bonner: There is amazing expertise and know-how in Britain and we’re a British brand, so celebrating that is important. There are incredible craftspeople here and we wanted to work with something that had very a special kind of quality to it, as well as to have that closeness to how things are made. It’s something that we have been exploring in the collection as it’s really important to our mission.
Angela Baidoo: A number of the artisanal crafted and embroidery pieces were Made in India, what was the thinking behind combining the different types of craft from across the globe into one collection?
Grace Wales Bonner: Craftsmanship, and a global sense of craftsmanship, is very important for Wales Bonner and we’re celebrating different craft traditions and techniques from across cultures, whether that’s British craft traditions from Crombie, to hand woven macrame from India. I want to show that all these different things can co-exist in one place and all be seen as luxury.
Angela Baidoo: And considering that thread of heritage, do you consider your brand as a living archive?
Grace Wales Bonner: It’s definitely something I think about, but more in relation to the research practice as I have an ongoing artistic practice which means I’m often looking at history and looking at the archive for inspiration. It’s a kind of dialogue, where I’m in dialogue and connecting to history and to a lineage through that dialogue and research process. So, it is definitely research and that process that sits next to what I do as a designer.