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Grace Wales Bonner is a woman designing for men. And although her designs are infused with a slight femininity, she’s not looking to gender-blend. The Central Saint Martins graduate explores what it is to be a man (a black man in particular) with a fusion of Savile Row tailoring and traditional African embellishment. “It’s weird that we’ve come back to this point now where [menswear] is so conservative whereas there are so many examples in history where men have been able to be more expressive than women,” she said in a recent interview. Her demi-couture work has so far earned her the 2016 LVMH Young Designer Prize as well as being awarded Emerging Designer at the 2015 British Fashion Awards. Wales Bonner travels to far-flung locations – recently Sierra Leone and Johannesburg for inspiration, noting “it’s really important for me to do these kinds of research projects. It always informs the work.”
[Photo: Getty]