Footwear maverick Manolo Blahnik has lent his craft to up-and-coming designer Grace Wales Bonner for fall 2017.
Wales Bonner, who presented her latest collection Saturday during London Fashion Week Men’s, teamed with Blahnik on the footwear for the show, featuring cut-out leather sandals and backless loafers and patchwork boots.
Inspired by the rhythm of day-to-day life, the designer portrayed a series of different characters as part of the show.
“There’s the spiritual, the effeminate son — which is the more romantic-renaissance character,” Grace Wales Bonner described backstage post-show, “and then there’s also the intellectual and the street rocker.”
The footwear ran as a common thread between the different characters, each walking at their own pace down their runway, sometimes speeding past and sometimes progressing slowly.
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The Renaissance character matched his patterned leather trousers to patchwork leather boots in similar earth-toned hues. The boots also featured in a black-and-white version to accompany a series of less-decorated looks of crinkled trousers and slim sweaters representing the street rockers.
Elsewhere in the collection, square-toed cut-out flat sandals took center stage. Materials varied and included tanned brown versions that accessorized the intellectuals’ Fifties gray duffel coats and dusters in British tweed. There also were much louder versions in dalmatian prints or green croc leather that were worn by the rockers.
“It was just a reflection of reality, really. Different characters that move in different ways,” said Bonner.
