Bianca Saunders AW20 — The Rakish Gent

Videolight, the autumn collection from Bianca Saunders, was as ever, deeply personal in paying homage to her Black Caribbean roots and her signature style of creating clothes that capture movement.

Showcased as part of London Fashion Week Mens, the presentation was inspired by VHS recordings of dancehall parties that led the designer to consider the joy of dancing as well as how obsolete technology warps imagery. Distorting notions of masculinity, each season Saunders offers a new prospect for menswear.

For autumn, this means padded jackets with wires running through horizontal seams to create movement as if having stopped and paused. Those same wires also ran through the back of a shirt to capture fluidity. Shoulders were a particular focus, with attention drawn to them on denim shirts which had the shoulder point brought closer to the neck, allowing the sleeve to follow the natural line of the body.

A signature style was developed on jackets to highlight strength and softness, by a shoulder-pad sitting atop a sleeve-head tucked underneath. It worked best on a tailored jacket with a concealed button. A long, tailored coat with that same signature shoulder style had a covered pocket to show no buttons, which was the same on the shirts. Some shirts had ruching at the side, as if hitched up. Trousers were cinched in a precise fashion, with sweatpants that had a double waistband, the elastic becoming a form of ruching.

Everything that Bianca Saunders does is an interesting experiment. Waistcoats were to the floor, T-shirts folded and gathered and colours are taken from the screen grab of a dancehall party, with that image appearing on the back of a black T-shirt.

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