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Over 10 years designing for her Wales Bonner label, Grace Wales Bonner has dressed discerning celebrities from Jude Bellingham to Letitia Wright.
For the Met Gala in May, she created outfits for Lewis Hamilton, FKA Twigs and Jeff Goldblum. But for her show in Paris on a sweltering Wednesday evening, there was a shift to a new generation on the catwalk.
Liam Gallagher’s son Gene, Bobby Gillespie’s son Wolf and Myles Lewis-Skelly, Arsenal’s 18-year-old midfielder and left-back, who broke into the first team in the 2024/25 season, modelled.
The collection was shown in a room full of bookshelves – fitting for a brand inspired by writers from James Baldwin to Nikki Giovanni, whose poem My Tower (Pretty Little Baby) was on the show notes. Titled Jewel, it featured Wales Bonner looking at archetypes of clothing and perfecting them through her specific lens.
Standout designs included a hunting jacket cut to accentuate the wearer’s waist, a tailored black suit with brown lapels and jumpers in a melange knit, worn with shorts.
Different takes on glamour were explored, from the sequin chiffon shirt and lowslung jeans worn by Gillespie, to Lewis-Skelly’s simple silk shirt and trousers and models in tailcoats, carrying gloves.
The collection once again had that signature Wales Bonner secret sauce: clothes that felt conceptual enough for a catwalk show, but were also seriously desirable. Those in the front row were likely making mental shopping lists as the models came down the catwalk.
Backstage, Wales Bonner said she was thinking about “people who collect specific types of clothing, and what that wardrobe looks like”. She focused that around “mixing sports heritage and casual preppy language, and fine tailoring”.
Part of the inspiration came from working on the Met Gala and its accompanying exhibition, Superfine, with the theme of Black style and dandyism. “I wanted to have some sense of continuity and think about that character,” she said. “What would they wear in a more everyday way?”
She said working with Hamilton had been particularly important. “He has been so supportive of me over the years, it’s so special for him to give me the opportunity on such a world stage. [It was a] really inspiring process, there were definitely things I took from that language.”
The milestone of the brand reaching a decade was also on her mind. “The learnings I’ve had over the last 10 years, that’s in everything I put forward and think about the future,” she said. “I feel like I’ve got enough confidence and I’ve built enough of a language and identity, we can be a bit relaxed.”
The designer’s influence has increased over that time, along with the brand. In April, it was reported that the brand expected to end the financial year with 81% growth compared with the previous year, with revenue doubling since 2022.
The designer’s collaboration with Adidas, begun in 2020, is central to this. It has helped the sports brand boom over the past few years – everyone from Rihanna to Rishi Sunak has started wearing her popular silver and leopard print Samba shoe.
This collection moved the narrative on – it debuted a collaboration with Y-3, the Adidas label that originally started as partnership between the sports brand and Yohji Yamamoto. On the catwalk, this was seen in a tracktop and shorts, as well as football boot-like sneakers. These shoes, described by Wales Bonner as “quite iconic”, could well be the next Samba.
The opening of Balenciaga by Demna, an exhibition showcasing items created by the mononymic designer over his decade at the brand, also too place on Wednesday. Displaying designs including the leather bag that looks like the IKEA Frakta, a skirt made out of a towel and a cap with branding similar to that of Bernie Saunders’ 2016 election campaign, it demonstrated how influential Demna’s pop art-like take on luxury has been.
As he moves to a job designing for Gucci, Pierpaolo Piccioli, formerly of Valentino, will take over at Balenciaga. Piccioli was present at this opening, possibly to absorb the Balenciaga of his predecessor. His first collection for the brand will debut in October.
