Sing Song

Grace Wales Bonner’s first collection dedicated solely to womenswear is her most personal yet. In Selah, she distills years of research, design, and lived experience. The result is a body of work featuring clothing that speaks to what (chic) women, like Bonner, want to wear every day.

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Brought to life in images by Zoë Ghertner, Bonner’s meticulous attention to detail comes to play in silhouettes that feel both composed and intuitive. An interplay between masculine and feminine codes takes shape in contrasts: A fringe macramé dress that unfurls below the waist and a black sleeveless dress in the most supple cashmere yarn both evoke a certain softness, while sharp suiting and weighty leather ensembles ground the collection in a pragmatic hardiness. The same quiet precision that defines Bonner’s menswear finds a natural counterpart here: These are clothes for women to move in. Each piece holds its own note—some crisp, others stretched into a lingering hum.

Bonner is a designer with deep archival instincts, always in tune with the past. Her Fall/Winter 2025 RTW collection collection, both instinctive and assured, channels the spirit of Ebony and Jet—iconic magazines that chronicled Black-American life from the late 1940s through the 2010s. Nods to the dynamism of the 1970s honor history without compromising her studied, modern vision.

One black-and-white portrait of a woman with a swooped bob peering to the side by Moneta Sleet Jr. appears on a cropped T-shirt in the collection. The image comes from the Black Image Corporation, a conceptual project by artist Theaster Gates that preserves and reactivates the vast photographic archive of Johnson Publishing Company, the magazine’s original owner. 

While Bonner’s collections bridge decades, even centuries, translating a wealth of style references, here she is more designer—and wearer—than storyteller. Her focus is less on narrative and more on the intimacy between body and fabric, in the excitement of getting dressed, of wearing your favorite clothes.

“Selah," a word that marks a pause in biblical verse, takes on new meaning in Bonner’s collection, much like a song passed down: a rhythm for everyday dressing, clothes that carry history forward and settle into daily life itself.