The designer opens up about her enviable collaboration with the sportswear brand
This autumn, Grace Wales Bonner and Adidas teamed up and, in doing so, created a collaboration to end all collaborations.
A typically elegant offering from the designer, Wales Bonner describes the collection as “luxury sportswear from an Afro-Atlantic perspective”.
Available from Matches Fashion, the collection spans track jackets and pants, sweaters, shirts, T-shirts and trainers, fusing Wales Bonners’ own distinctive design language with that of Adidas’.
“I wanted to explore the intersection between tailoring and sportswear,” the designer tells AnOther. “I was thinking about the Lovers Rock community and particularly John Goto’s work. I was interested in how sportswear was naturally integrated into people’s wardrobes alongside tailoring and wanted to speak to this effortless and elevated approach to dressing.”
Effortless and elevated it is. The collection also takes inspiration from the sartorial stylings of Bob Marley, as well as the effect that dancehall music from Jamaica had on London fashion during the 1970s. But while it carries echoes of a decade gone by, it also feels contemporary, grounded in and relevant to the present.
The partnership between Wales Bonner and Adidas feels natural, too – and that is partly because the designer has a relationship with the brand that far precedes this collaboration. “Adidas felt like a natural partner as it was a present brand in much of my research,” she explains. “It has been naturally integrated and transformed in the wardrobes of so many cultural icons.”
Needless to say, much of the collection has already sold out, demonstrating not only the success of the collaboration but Wales Bonner’s ability to translate her esoteric approach to fashion into highly enviable clothes.
Last month, the designer also launched the campaign for her Autumn/Winter 2020 ‘Lovers Rock’ collection, which was photographed by the celebrated Russian-Ghanaian photographer Liz Johnson Artur.
Adidas x Wales Bonner is available at Matches Fashion.