BIANCA SAUNDERS
With dancehall culture, it’s usually a woman in front of the camera with the guys standing farther back. I thought it would be quite interesting to switch that around, with the guys dancing in front. They’re just dancing; they’re having fun. The idea of the booths came from a peep show I saw years ago, when Soho was still a bit seedy. I wanted to base it on the idea that you’ve seen something almost sexual and you only get a peep of it. They went into the booth, danced for a bit and then went out.
is a way to make it feminine. Having a sophisticated way to bring in feminine elements, playing with ideas around proportion and shape. It has been quite challenging, but I feel like I’ve done exactly what I’ve set out to do. You worked with your family for the Spring/Summer 2020 campaign. Why is that something you wanted to do? At the time, I felt that my work was removed from myself. I wanted to bring myself back to the people I’m actually around all the time. Ronan McKenzie shoots a lot of personal work that includes her mum or includes her cousins, so we spoke about it and it just made sense to shoot my family. Familiarity was a massive theme throughout the collection.
You also showed a collection in a bedroom for Spring/ Summer 2020. The idea of secret intimacy has been a massive thread. How do you expose intimacy publicly? I like reading everyone else’s secrets. I want people to see things they’ve never really picked up on. I don’t want my work to be a reference collection; it should always go beyond that.
What do you mean when you said you felt removed from your work? I think the beginning stage of starting a brand involves questioning yourself a lot. Do I want to be in my own campaigns? Do I want to make my work so personal that it exposes a lot about me? After a while, it started to lack the element of who I actually am and what I’m about. Then, the last collection, where I did put myself more into the brand or show more of who I am, it’s the best work I’ve done. It’s authentic to me.
Why were these different aspects of black masculinity something you wanted to talk about? At the time, there was an exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of black masculinity and dandyism, which was curated by Ekow Eshun. Then there was also the conversation on Instagram about “Black Boy Joy.” A lot of people were doing photoshoots around black masculinity, and I felt it became a bit the same. It wasn’t fully representative of people I actually knew. It was guys in pink or guys with flowers or in some field. I thought there were ways to show softness, empathy and vulnerability without pushing it that way. It was just showing how I see the people around me.
What do you want to do next? I think just making the brand survive and see it grow in terms of becoming a household name. That’s my longterm goal. Being able to see people in the street wearing my clothes—I see it on Instagram, but I’ve never passed someone. Those things make me really excited. It’s all the small things.
How do you think you display vulnerability in your work? It’s effeminate, but it doesn’t overtly reveal skin. Usually skin
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