A week before Bianca Saunders’ Paris Fashion Week presentation for her FW25 collection, we got to drop by the London-based designer’s studio to chat about her mood board, the music and the photography that inspires her, and her favourite design pieces.
Her new collection, named “A Dichotomy” explores movement and motion in clothing, inspired by Jamaican dancers and movement photography. The pieces themselves show an evolution of her craft, with her signature twisting techniques that are being perfected season by season, creased and crushed fabrics and a new take on last season’s knot bag.
Here’s what went down.
On how she got into her work:
”I always wanted to do fashion design and since graduating from the Royal College of Art I knew that I wanted my own brand and from there I started making films and making clothes, and it brought the whole world together.”
On her mood board:
”There’s actually a lot of photography images on my mood board. A lot of it is disfigured people and subtle movement, and a push and pull element that the collection has. I was looking at a lot of Jamaican dancers, and early 2000s music videos, the dances are always quite disjointed and distorted. And some mood ideas and facial expressions, that add an element of shock but also stillness. And stills from Robert Longo and Steven Parino’s work. And some sketches by artist Shanti Bell – I’m working with her for the presentation – and she’s created these suspended figures which are held and connected by weights and that pulls them altogether.”
On Robert Longo’s photography:
”In his series ’Men in Cities’, he would throw things at his subjects and capture how the clothes and the people would move in interesting ways. And it would mostly be actors or friends, and I like the idea of creating images of people moving in twisted ways. This is why my collection’s called ’A Dichotomy’, because it is two worlds that don’t really necessarily match.”
On her inspiration:
“It’s all about deconstructing the idea around movement within clothing. I've been looking at artists like Steven Parino, and Robert Longo’s photography and generally sporadic figures. I was really interested in capturing movement with clothing. I wanted to create freedom and also constraint with the clothing.”
On her favourite thing in her studio:
”It could be anything? I should probably take this Christmas tree down, but it’s not down yet. Can’t reach it. There’s a picture in the corner that’s been taken by Akinola Davies Junior. It’s the model’s family and each family member is wearing a part of my first collection, from 2018.”
On the soundtrack:
“I was listening to a lot of electronic RnB, a lot of Clairo, repeated beats, there’s a particular track from George Riley – I really like her music. When I was thinking about it, I was thinking about the movement of the performers, and what sort of slow motion sound could create the movement.”
On her favourite piece from the collection:
“It’s a pair of leather trousers from this season are my favourite design, they have a pin hem and a classic detail of mine, the twisted seams – but from the back it looks more like a straight-cut trouser. It adds classic tailoring within crushed leather. We’ve worked with amazing leather specialists this season and experimented with techniques, and the leather is very lightweight in terms of the fit and it’s paper thin, and I love the crushed, scrunched paper look on the leather.”
On the archive reference she keeps going back to:
”It’s a crushed blue shirt from AW21, it’s part of my surrealist collection, the collection was called ’Super Imposed’ and it had a lot of trompe l’oeil effects of clothing replicating clothing. It was during lockdown so people weren’t wearing clothes, it was almost making super-imposing clothes that we should be wearing.”
On her prints:
”A lot of my prints, they usually come from me trying to place something together, subverting imagery in an interesting way. Or archive referencing or family, or things I’ve photographed.”
On what she’s excited about:
”I’m excited about finishing this collection [she laughs]. I’ve got a lot of exciting projects coming up, that are outside of clothing. I look forward to showing more of that.”
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