Grace Wales Bonner: Actively sartorial sports-style chic

This show felt very much like a coming-of-age moment for Grace Wales Bonner, perhaps because it was held in the library of the number one ranked secondary school in Paris.

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Backed up with grace by Dutch harpist Ranie Ribeiro, the show was staged inside Lycée Henry-IV, right behind the Panthéon, where reside the great legends of France – from Marie Curie, Josephine Baker and Simone Veil to Victor Hugo and Émile Zola.

Wales Bonner, in turn, has been a star for some time — in fact, ever since her debut show in London inside a forgotten Edwardian townhouse behind Buckingham Palace a decade ago. Since then, she has gone on to win the LVMH Prize and the CFDA International Menswear Designer of the Year among many accolades, thanks to her uber-fresh tailoring, subtle use of sports-style and above all her unique blend of UK hipsterism and Afro-Caribbean panache.

So much so that classic tailoring brands, venerable marques and hot active sports labels all vie to collaborate with Wales Bonner.

Her co-ed show on Wednesday evening opened with guys in belted shorts and crisp techy jackets and girls in silk shorts and saddle-stitched leather jerkins. Everything was perfectly cut — as was the tailoring made in a link-up with Savile Row institution Anderson & Sheppard.

She cut lean suits with ever-so-flared pants and jackets with contrast collars and revived that famed English fashion classic, the Crombie, for men and women, lightening the look and accessorizing with diamond baobab-flower brooches and berets courtesy of Stephen Jones.

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Wales Bonner has a justly mega reputation for creating hit footwear, and her savvy revival in contrast colors of the famed Y-3 Field shoe looks like being another huge hit. All the opening looks were anchored by Montego tasseled loafers — likely to become fan favorites.

Grace’s designs can occasionally seem deceptively simple, but they always manage to combine wearability with an intriguing sense of newness, just like this collection.

This all led to an elegiac finale of eveningwear, tuxedos and tails — worn by young men and women with evident pride as the soundtrack mixed in “For Some We Loved” by Dorothy Ashby and “Eternal Life” by Shira Small, courtesy of arranger James William Blades.

The entire show earned an intense burst of applause, further underlining her exceptional trajectory in fashion. In a word, Grace Wales Bonner is the new Miuccia Prada of menswear.