Bianca Saunders fielded a rarely experienced juxtaposition at her show in Paris: her serious ability to design minimalist-modern clothes against a presentation with an affectionately funny context. One way or another, she’s always pointed toward her Jamaican family background in her London shows. This time, she brought it out for all to enjoy, with a turquoise-painted set that included a corner bar and audio clips taken from the long-running TV show career of Jamaica’s national treasure, the comedian and playwright Oliver Samuels.
“This collection is close to my heart!” she later wrote on her Instagram page. “Being able to share stories around my Jamaican culture in an artistic context is an honor.” She thanked Samuels for his permission to use material from his vintage Blouse and Skirt series, a live-TV comedy with guests that, as far as the audience could hear, involved snatches from some absurd conversational scenarios about modeling and a fashion show.
The runway photos tell the other story about how far the British-born Royal College of Art alum has developed her investigation into cutting out a new and elevated way of dressing for her peers. On a broader spectrum, she is one of the generation pushing a new kind of elegance in tailoring and how it can segue through, across genders, into everyday wear—something that’s beginning to reach critical mass as a subject in this latest cycle of shows.
The Bianca Saunders method begins with constructing pieces that contain the vestiges of formality—tailored suit jackets and tuxedo coats with draped fronts—but are actually ingeniously made without fastenings, to be pulled on, over the head, as easily as a sweatshirt.
Her aesthetic leans toward simplifying, while upgrading and endorsing real ways of dressing. So for example, the look of a white T-shirt gains presence as a cap-sleeve satin tunic, worn over easy putty-colored leather trousers and accessorized with her detail-free matching square-toe slip-on shoes. To finish the total look, there’s her highly desirable minimalist-practical bag: a usefully sized top-handle design that’s concealed in a featureless rectangular wrap of leather.
Getting down an original and desirable look for bags and shoes, relevant for anyone across genders, is a commercial achievement that could asterisk Saunders’s talent for any luxury-goods company. In developing it, she’s already collaborating with and being facilitated by Ecco leather. The refinement of the eye for such things takes time and a persnickety kind of perfectionism.
There was more. As the show went on, Saunders showed what she’s able to achieve in coordinated chunky rib knit, exaggerating and elevating the template of the sweat suit to the potential echelon of high fashion. Same goes for her conceptually printed, geometrically glitchy pajama sets. It’s all relatable and quite obviously redolent of a talent that surely belongs to the future of fashion.
