For A/W '21, Bianca Saunders Looks Through the Keyhole

It's no longer in doubt: Bianca Saunders has a vision. Despite a fairly recent debut in the June of 2018, the 29-year-old designer has quickly become something of a promised child during the London leg of show season. You'll see something exciting, and you'll see actual promise, as did Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele who selected Saunders to participate in Guccifest: a cinematic showcase of next gen talent that coincided with the brand's most recent collection (an arthouse series directed by Gus Van Sant with the very Gus Van Sant title of Ouverture of Something that Never Ended). It's a solid rise for the designer, and one that reached new heights during another digitised fashion week as Saunders used the creative (and social) distance to impressive effect.

Presented within a short fashion film titled Superimosed, the surreal flick felt like a model casting, but in the shadowy world of Ingmar Bergman. A serene model assumed various positions around artefacts that simultaneously held no meaning and yet plenty of meaning all at once: the severed head of an unfortunate classical statue, a naked tree branch, a sculptured wire mobile (Saunders debuted a collection of sculptures at Paris's Palais de Tokyo last summer), and a lingering, Hitchcockian shot through the window of a keyhole. The collection notes cite Dada and surrealist photographer Man Ray and multidisciplinary artist Jean Cocteau as major influences, among others.

So far, so very fashion. But while the film itself has a dreamlike Dali-on-amitriptyline quality, the clothes (the most important bit) couldn't have been clearer. Announcing that "it's all about the shoulder", Saunders made structure a key ingredient of her A/W '21 collection. Though instead of going all Johnny Bravo with Mad Men suiting, and by swerving Balenciaga's assertion that billowy is beautiful, Saunders fell somewhere in the middle. These clothes are sharp, assertive and incisive, but without Instabaiting statement.

Jackets in blazing red and deep end blue were boxy, and sat above trousers with a slight kick that didn't go full Seventies. Some shirts, though ruched or ruffled, were surprisingly clean and functional. With a sustainable focus in mind, old Wrangler jeans were repurposed with a graphic print of creased denim while fun, frilly shorts of a prior collection found a second wind in a jacket that was just as, well, fun. And all of that was bridged together by a sense of structure and volume that didn't strain, be that in a tuxedo jacket complete with sunken shoulders (which was great) to a tailored, razor-sharp, brick red overcoat (which was really, really great).

It was testament to Saunders' skill at self-editing. A collection of such variance could've been overkill. Instead, it was creative, but still refreshingly wearable. Few designers could do that with details like ruffles and ruching, which still remain maddeningly divisive. What's more, there were trickles of gender fluidity – an ongoing push of the designer – but they still ebbed and flowed with the mainstream.

View full post on Youtube

If you weren't convinced of Saunders' precise eye for design, consider the size of Superimposed and the collection at large. Only 17 looks were showcased. The film itself clocked in at a mere 55 seconds. And yet within those slight assets, we get the clearest picture of Bianca Saunders thus far. South London's prodigal daughter isn't jumping into the menswear pool with both feet and no snorkel. Instead, this is a designer that examines her own work through both a literal and figurative keyhole, designing and editing as appropriate, and succeeding in full.

During the ongoing pandemic, the usual show space has been kept under lock and key, but that hasn't stopped Saunders peering into both the fashion scene at large, and into her own work, to unlock a new sort of menswear. It is wonderfully weird, and it is reassuringly wearable.