This season, London’s fan-favourite designer Grace Wales Bonner turned down the glitz and glamour of the catwalk for something far more intimate — her own studio.
Paying homage to the quiet rituals that unfold in a creative space, the British-Jamaican designer romanticises the personal experiences housed within its walls, weaving its AW25 collection with the vulnerability, focus, and sense of community that define the home-from-home setting. Captured through the lens of Oliver Hadley Pearch, the collection is presented under the very roof it was designed under, set against the studio’s stark white walls.
Workwear silhouettes in Italian leather and Japanese canvas are bathed in indigo-dyed processes, their sharp, formal aesthetic subtly thrown off-kilter—textbook Wales Bonner—through the soft contrast of corduroy jackets and denim. Welly-style boots, studded and bold, tuck into jeans, practically itching to hit the fields of Glastonbury this June, while another model walks barefoot, swathed in a navy-blue trench coat. Elsewhere, gold lock closures punctuate outerwear, sharpening Wales Bonner’s meticulous design language.
At the heart of AW25, however, is a collaboration with Theaster Gates and his ongoing Black Image Project. The Chicago-based artist has been working with the Johnson Publishing Company, revisiting the archives of Ebony and Jet magazines to honour the legacy of Black women in shaping global culture. Their influence threads through the collection in the form of still photography by Moneta Sleet Jr. and Isaac Sutton, reimagined across denim co-ords, graphic T-shirts, and cerulean blue button-ups.
Once again, with community at its core, Wales Bonner’s AW25 collection reads as a love letter to heritage—woven with culture, creation, and craftsmanship.
Words — Freya Goodchild-Bridge
