Heading down the Seine after this Bianca Saunders presentation, I felt inspired to fire up “Upsetter Dub 14 Blackboard Jungle” on the headphones and enjoy a comprehensive sonic mind floss. Lee “Scratch” Perry, who sadly passed in 2021, was easily amongst the greatest musicians of the 20th century; his work was central to the development of both reggae and dub (not to mention drum ’n’ bass, jungle, and more). And as Bianca Saunders discovered when she visited an exhibition in London earlier this year, Perry was also an accomplished visual artist. As with his music, he mixed forms and bent materials in order to create new landscapes.
After consulting with the Perry estate in Switzerland, Saunders chose motifs from his Ark archive and then set about incorporating them into her clothing design. She approached this with a spirit not too dissimilar to that of Perry, adding apparently found materials like tape and strapping to change the architecture of her garments. There were also some graphic references.
She continued her collaboration with Farah, a brand with a fascinating and ever-shifting history in the pantheon of workwear. She also focused on soft hopsack fabrications instead of the company’s famous rigid cottons and used topstitching to expose the functional anatomy of the pieces. There was also a new iteration of her shoe designs with At Kollektive, featuring gently rounded chisel-toed boots with folded uppers, nicely playing against the tape detailing above. The innovative and interrogative use of draping to undo symmetry and create unconventionality remained present and correct. It was particularly effective in a blue check shirtdress that was wrapped around the body and tendriled through the strapping on an indigo denim shirt.
