Bianca Saunders is a fashion designer, born and based in London where she grew up in a Jamaican home.
She completed her BA in Fashion Design at Kingston University, then specialized in menswear during her MA at the Royal College of Art. Her work is an exploration of different identities and draws heavily on her background growing up in London with a strong West-Indian heritage.
Her MA graduate collection centered on black male identities and aimed to challenge stereotypes of hypermasculinity, proposing a new kind of aesthetic accented with feminine details.
She was recently named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list of the top young entrepreneurs of 2020. In addition, Bianca wom the 2019/2020 British Fashion Council’s NewGen Prize. So what influences her fashion design. According to Bianca her garments reflects contemporary masculinity and her Caribbean heritage.
Bianca Saunders is part of a fresh wave of designers creating clothing that is informed by their identities and cultural heritage. A graduate of London’s Royal College of Art MA programme, Saunders challenges gender construction and explores her Black Caribbean roots. From this unique perspective, the designer creates pieces that blend sharp, minimalist tailoring with rich, draped fabrics; key pieces include ruffled shirting, nylon trousers and reworked tailoring. The brand is included in MATCHESFASHION’s Innovators Programme, which supports emerging talent.
This What SSENSE wrote about this designer
A distinctive new voice in the menswear arena, RCA alumnus Bianca Saunders specializes in proposing jarring twists to succinct garments, effectively redefining existing notions of masculinity. Drawing from touchstones on either side of her British and West Indian background, Saunders addresses the tension between tradition and evolution in designs that reference classic streetwear and avant-garde couture in equal measure, at times within the same piece.
Staple jersey t-shirts are transformed by way of delicate ruched flourishes, while experiments in satin textures blur the line between lounge pant and formal trouser. These carefully-considered tweaks transform everyday basics into imposing statement pieces, all the while instilling an overarching sense of artisanal craftsmanship to augment otherwise straightforward constructions.
With a visual framework that is both familiar and alien, Bianca Saunders’ collections are shrouded in an ambiguity that invites unbounded self-expression in the wearer. This refreshingly self-assured sense of ambition establishes Bianca Saunders as a label unafraid to explore the malleability of streetwear-informed fashion, resulting in collections that effectively reveal the vulnerability that underlies straight-faced menswear.
Check out Bianca’s Website
