“I want to be able to celebrate with people,” said Grace Wales Bonner. “I feel like sometimes doing a fashion show, it's quite a small group of people that can experience that. And I want to open up and allow people to interact with intentionality.” On Saturday evening, the London-based fashion designer was in the auditorium at the Guggenheim, where she was hosting “Togetherness,” the second edition of a traveling concert starring a lineup of artists whose sounds resonate with her vision of elegant Afro-Atlantic menswear.
Wales Bonner’s desire to expand the world of her brand isn’t theoretical: Unlike an exclusive runway show or any number of the fashion parties that have sprung up ahead of Monday’s Met Gala, Togetherness was open to the public. Tickets to the event—featuring performances by South African acapella group The Joy, fashion world-favorite DJ and producer Acyde, Lagos highlife band The Cavemen, American-Ghanian R&B superstar Amaarae, and skater-rapper Sage Elsesser, a.k.a. Navy Blue—quickly sold out.
The designer has a lot to celebrate. A decade after its founding, Wales Bonner is one of the most culturally influential menswear brands in fashion. Led by Wales Bonner’s confident spirit of collaboration across music, art, and sportswear (her Adidas collection remains a massively successful contemporary style touchstone), the luxury label is firmly grounded in a flourishing creative community who inspire Wales Bonner, and who are in turn inspired by her.
The impact of her work is evident in this year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” which includes several Wales Bonner looks. “I’m excited for Monday!” said Wales Bonner, who will be making her first appearance at the Met Gala, where she’s also set to dress a number of A-list attendees, a process she called “very enriching.”
But first, she was eager for her own bash to get underway. Music, she said, “underlies a lot of what I do.” Togetherness first debuted last June in Paris. “Being able to have it travel to different cities is really, really exciting for me, because it's been something that's been in my head for a long time,” she said of the concept, which she conceived as a way to introduce her favorite performers (some familiar, many not) in unorthodox venues. “I'm really excited about people that break the boundaries of what they're doing, or have lots of different influences that can be felt within the music.”
Shortly after 8 p.m., the rotunda was already filling up as guests snaked their way up the spiral ramp to take in “Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers,” the Chicago artist’s epic survey of painting, sculpture, and performance. Wales Bonner herself is a multidisciplinary thinker—she and Johnson have stayed in touch ever since the designer included his work in a show she curated for the Serpentine Gallery in London. “To be around this incredible artwork is really a special moment,” she said. “Togetherness is also about seeing artists in different contexts, so it was really aligned.”
The festival atmosphere steadily increased as Sir Rashad Ringo Smith, the OG hip-hop DJ, spun through a set in the rotunda. Though Wales Bonner described herself as more of a “good listener” than a performer herself, she frequently collaborates with musicians on custom show soundtracks, from Kendrick Lamar to the young composer Duval Timothy. “It's quite natural, these kinds of friendships and relationships that work around and support and enhance or inspire what I do,” she said. “So [Togetherness] feels like a natural extension of that kind of relationship, which is symbiotic.” Wales Bonner’s plan is to bring Togetherness to different cities in the near future.
The fashion set in attendance seemed to unanimously agree that it was the best party of all the pre-Met festivities. Where else could you see a Rashid Johnson show before roaming from an Acyde set to a Cavemen concert, all within an unparalleled aesthetic temple? But the night’s main attraction, arguably, was the diverse and supremely stylish audience. Many in the house were wearing Wales Bonner, but among those who weren’t, the designer's influence remained clear, with VIPs and ticket holders alike dressing with a worldly exuberance shared by the art world luminaries holding court, including Henry Taylor and Jordan Casteel. A powerful preview of the singular world of Wales Bonner before her Met Gala moment on Monday.