The vibrant 25 year old wunderkind, Grace Wales Bonner has just been awarded this year’s LVMH Prize for Young Designers.
She is also the recipient of last year’s British Fashion Council Award and the previous’ year L’Oreal Professional Talent Award. She is a graduate from Central Saint Martins and in only two years after releasing her first collection has become a breakthrough designer and perhaps one of the most talked-about as well, grabbing the attention of everyone in the fashion world. Obviously, this includes the judges of LVMH who just happen to be Karl Lagerfeld, Phoebe Philo, and Jonathan Anderson. She also recently showcased her latest collection at London Collections Men to much applaud. And it hasn’t just been fashion folks going crazy about her but music artists like Rihanna and A$AP Rocky are falling as much in love with her as everyone else.
She is English and Jamaican, and her menswear collections are inspired by Western African attire and the intellectual era of the Harlem Renaissance. Her clothing designs exude masculinity in a way that’s classic, comfortable, and dare I say emotional. Along with designers like Craig Green, Grace is setting herself apart by rethinking the way we view manhood. It’s her own view of how men can and perhaps ought to look and behave like – and we welcome it. Her clothing, unconventional as it may seem, showcases the importance of looking to young artists to tell us what we’re missing and where we’re headed, and we cannot be any more excited for this bold designer to be one of the few to lead the way.
