THE JOURNAL
Few designers delve into the archives like Ms Grace Wales Bonner, whose work is always imbued with a deep connection to heritage and culture. Wales Bonner pieces are the product of extensive research, exploring fresh perspectives on history, art and communities. And like the best kind of history lessons, they are always fresh, vibrant and celebratory affairs – the hard-won knowledge worn as light and effortlessly as the clothes themselves.
So it is with Wales Bonner’s newest work, and the latest in the designer’s partnership with adidas Consortium. The SS22 collection is a result of two kinds of investigation: Wales Bonner’s response to adidas’ vast archive; and the places and people to whom the designer’s own exploration has taken her.
In previous collections with adidas, Wales Bonner has tuned into dancehall music of 1980s Jamaica for inspiration and taken her cue from radical thinkers of the same era – artists, poets and scholars from the Caribbean, India and West Africa. And it is to the latter location that Wales Bonner returns for SS22, drawing on the music and photography of Burkina Faso for a collection that takes its cue from the sunniest times in the nation’s history, in a celebration of creative energy, style and individuality.
“The spring-summer draws on a time-honoured tradition of West African studio portraiture, notably the work of Burkinabe artist Sanlé Sory in the 1970s,” Wales Bonner tells MR PORTER. “His documentation of the music culture and people in Burkina Faso at the time has been an inspiration to me and this collection.”
“I wanted there to be a cinematic quality, imaging colours that also might be faded in the sun in warm climates”
That the Wales Bonner x adidas collection is a sunny and celebratory one is not a surprise given the inspiration. Mr Sory’s potent images of Western African youth culture are a document of Burkina Faso in a pivotal moment, post freedom from French colonial rule. Sory set up his first photography studio in his regional capital Bobo-Dioulasso in 1960, the year of independence, as he neared his 18th birthday. Through the next two decades, his work recorded the newfound sense of liberation and joy, in monochrome images of dancing, music and vibrant life.
This sun soaked West African mood permeates the Wales Bonner and adidas SS22 collection, which has a bold, elated quality to it. See the vibrant and richly textured athletic jacquard knitwear for starters, with its matching shorts and vest in an iconic bright red colour. There is also a new 1970s-inspired take on the classic track top and track pants, which with its bold flare and bright yellow colour, make the wearer want to move their body in new and liberating ways. This is the intention – the new collection “designed with a sense of freedom in mind offering soulful and elegant comfort,” says Wales Bonner.
The designer’s diligent research is evident in the way she threads her own thinking into the legacy of adidas. “My work is centred around research, and often involves looking at different archives as a starting point. adidas has always felt like a natural partner as it was a present brand in much of my research,” she says. And there was a simple logic about the discoveries she found in Sory’s work, as “many of the people in his photography were wearing adidas”.
There is a similarly easy logic threaded through the partnership; just as Sory’s photographs celebrate nightlife and party times, so this spring-summer collection offers footwear fit for the occasion. Wales Bonner reimagines iconic adidas styles with an eye for their retro appeal shot through with a classic elegance. The collection presents two elevated riffs on the adidas Country silhouette and sees the return of the WB Samba sneaker, a highlight of the inaugural collection – in primary red with white stripes or white with crayon-coloured green stripes. And colour is as good a way as any to capture what this collection is about, as Wales Bonner says: “I wanted there to be a cinematic quality to the colours, imaging colours that also might be faded in the sun in warm climates.”
It is then, a collection which celebrates the sunniest of times, just in time – we hope – for our own.