British designer Grace Wales Bonner is redefining menswear with a black power aesthetic that mixes African crafts, black contemporary media and art, and couture fashion. Bonner, a native of South East London, made a splash last month when she showed her Fall/Winter 2015-2016 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The collection, which was made up of 17 looks, incorporated elements of couture finery and African art. The looks not only challenged the visual representation of European luxury, but also confronted notions of black masculinity with several androgynous and gender bending aspects.

The artist who is of English and Jamaican descent recently told Dazed Digital,

I am drawn to black culture as a way of understanding that side of my heritage, and interested in how black identity is manifested through rhythms, how something like jazz can disrupt conventional European rhythmicality. I am hugely inspired by the black painter Kerry James Marshall and the 70s genre blaxploitation, both play with and disturb institutionalised notions of blackness.

Bonner was recently selected to present her Spring 2016 collection as part of London Collections: Men at the ICA gallery.