Grace Wales Bonner Covers The Happy Reader

Grace Wales Bonner, the 28-year-old founder of Wales Bonner, has been interviewed for The Happy Reader’s cover story by the Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri. Born and raised in south London, she has been tipped as one of the most promising designers of her generation.

After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2014, Wales Bonner launchd her eponymous label. She has since won the emerging menswear designer at the 2015 British Fashion Awards, the Louis Vuitton Fashion Prize 2016, and the British Land London Emerging Design medal in 2018. Earlier this year she staged her own multi-disciplinary exhibition, A Time for New Dreams, at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, that featured the works of artists that she admires, such as Laraaji (an American multi-instrumentalist).

The conversation is a rare insight into her creative process, as she infrequently gives interviews. Within it she states that she considers herself on some level a researcher, as she visits libraries and actively digests hordes of books on complex subject matters ranging from body politics to historical identity. The information she gathers then filters itself into her designs. According to The Happy Reader, the most significant aspect of her work is that all her collections come with reading lists.

Her work is informed by intense historical research on topics such as post-colonial theory and modern black identity. Her Autumn/Winter 19 collection, was named Mumbo Jumbo after the novel of the same name by American writer Ishmael Reed. Wales Bonner cites the way Reed used clothing to signify his academic presence as collection inspiration.

Her Spring/Summer 2018 collection, titled Blue Duets, also centred around a work of cultural criticism: Hilton Als’ 2017 essay James Baldwin/Jim Brown and the Children, that explores the theme of sexual expression from a queer black perspective. On first glance, the collection's tailored suits seem ordinary, but on closer inspection the waist is cinched, and the soft, silky fabric flares around the ankles, a touch of feminine fluidity.

The Happy Reader is a collaboration between publisher Penguin Classics and independent magazine Fantastic Man. It describes itself as a 'magazine-shaped book club, with the first half of the volume being dedicated to an interview with an avid book-reader, and the second dissecting a classic Book of the Season from multiple angles.'

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