Wales Bonner’s Sensitive Ode to Howard University

Grace Wales Bonner has been infatuated with America for some time now. After curating Spirit Movers at the tail-end of last year, an exhibition at MoMA that focused on Black cultural and aesthetic practices, the British designer also found herself working on a research project with Howard University in Washington, DC. As someone who favours intellectual rigour just as much as the cut of a coat – since launching her brand nearly a decade ago, Wales Bonner has included a reading list with her show notes (whoever said fashion people don’t read?) – Howard University provided rich inspiration for her Autumn/Winter 2024 collection in both sartorial, musical, and literary terms. 

A historically Black university, and thus an apt subject for the designer’s self-confessed “Afro-Atlantic take on luxury”, this season Wales Bonner honed in on Howard’s storied alumni, which includes Their Eyes Were Watching God author Zora Neale Hurston, and the university’s 90s yearbooks and student newspapers, which chronicle hip-hop performances, poetry readings, and photos of stylish students sprawled on the campus green. “I’ve always been drawn to Howard University as a location, and the way its campus has been a beacon for intellectual and poetic expression,” says Wales Bonner over email. “On their campus and in their archives, I came across amazing visions of style and exuberance; from there it became an imaginative encounter with the setting, the homecoming celebrations.” 

Set to an original soundtrack of music by Rashad Ringo Smith and Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), who briefly stood up from his seat on the front row to rattle off some bars from his hit song Mathematics, Wales Bonner’s A/W24 collection had a luxe varsity feel. Paraded through the halls of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris’s Le Marais, Howard-emblazoned crew necks, corduroy varsity jackets, leather aviator jackets, and satin baseball jerseys all proved that preppy style need not mean unsophisticated, nor immature.

Wales Bonner’s longstanding, highly acclaimed collaboration with adidas continued in the form of crocodile-embossed leather Superstars, retro weekend bags, and zip-up sweatshirts, as did her ongoing partnership with Savile Row tailors Anderson and Sheppard, the fruits of which included razor-sharp silk-trimmed tuxedos, and lush cashmere double-breasted coats. Just like the one worn by photographer Tyler Mitchell on the runway, many jackets and coats were pinned with peculiar brooches made of an assortment of artisanal beads, freshwater pearls, lapis lazuli and amethyst, like miniature, portable dreamcatchers. 

Speaking of the other inspirations behind the collection, Wales Bonner says, “I was interested in the way avant-garde expression has evolved from Sun Ra, and into the hip-hop era through conscious and cosmic rap. There was an intention to connect with this lineage and reflect that in a wardrobe.” And of the show’s surprise musical cameo, she says, “Yasiin is a guiding light. I admire the timeless music, the free spirit, the avant-garde expression.”

The title of the show, Dream Study, was fitting; these two words can be read as a cypher for Wales Bonner’s entire approach to design, with highbrow references distilled down into exquisite, beautiful clothing. In 2020, she summed up her approach to fashion perfectly in the pages of AnOther Magazine: “I believe that beauty can seduce you into an ideology, so it has a role to play in enticing people into a story.”