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Fashion is currently undergoing a period of profoundself-examination: identity politics, and the ways inwhich it impacts our runways and wardrobes, is beinginterrogated like never before. An industry that haslong been whitewashed is slowly starting to diversify bothits visible ambassadors and its operatives behind the scenes- but, as conversations about race, class and gender play outacross the globe, there is one designer whose work quietlycuts through the noise. Grace Wales Bonner, a preternaturallytalented 27-year-old, presents collections that offer carefullyconsidered meditations on race as well as remarkably covetableclothing. Her poetic subversions of stereotype offer a radicallynew proposition for luxury, paying tribute to oft-overwrittenhistories while placing blackness front and centre in her work. Small and slight, in person Wales Bonner is acutelycompelling. She speaks softly, commanding close attention,and reverberates with a cerebral intensity. Her designs, whichhave earned her fans from FKA Twigs and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye to Phoebe Philo, as well as the 2016 LVMH Prize,have similar impact – exquisite fabrications and demi-coutureembellishments imbued with deep-rooted meaning. Born insouth London to an English mother and Jamaican father(her grandfather was part of the Windrush generation), sheexplains that, growing up, “white people would tell me I wasblack, and black people would tell me I wasn’t black enough”.That conflict prompted a research-heavy investigation intoblack history, and her collections since have offered a spacewithin which she can negotiate and author her own identity.Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2014,Wales Bonner has predominantly focused on menswear: slim-cut tailoring and crisp separates modelled by a lithe groupof boys, worlds away from the urban luxury more regularlyassociated with young black men (in lieu of bling-blingaccessories, she often uses cowrie shells in homage to Africancurrency). This season heralds her first formal foray intowomenswear, through a collection that has evolved from herautumn/winter ’18 show. When I arrive at her east Londonhome to discuss this development, she is barefoot, dressedin an oversized pinstripe shirt and black trousers, her hairscraped into a low bun. That understated elegance has becomeher uniform, and acts as shorthand for her women’s clothing- because while they have never been the target of her shows,Wales Bonner has been in possession of a female audience fora while. In fact, ever since her first collection, buyers have askedher to reconfigure cuts to suit feminine proportions; after all,crushed-velvet jackets, or slim-cut dark denims, sit just ascomfortably in a woman’s wardrobe as a man’s. “The wayI think about gender is very blurred,” she says. “The menswearFROM LEFT: JEANWEARS JACKET, £1,830.TROUSERS, £770.ADWOA WEARS JACKET,£1,580. SHIRT, £450.TROUSERS, £515. KINGWEARS JACKET, £1,470.TROUSERS, £875.ADWOA, AS BEFORE.KESEWA WEARSSLEEVELESS JACKET,£1,185. TROUSERS,£515. MAXIMILIANWEARS T-SHIRT, £120.TROUSERS, £750. ALLWALES BONNER