Bianca Saunders

Bianca Saunders (born 1993) is a British fashion designer who founded the London-based menswear label that carries her name in 2017, after completing a master's degree at the Royal College of Art. Of Jamaican descent and raised in south-east London, she is known for tailoring that reworks conventional menswear through twisted seams, rolled shoulders and draping techniques drawn from womenswear, and for work that examines ideas of masculinity and Caribbean diaspora identity.

In 2021 Saunders won the grand prize at the 32nd ANDAM Fashion Awards in Paris, worth €300,000 and a year of mentoring from Balenciaga chief executive Cédric Charbit. She was a finalist for the LVMH Prize in the same year, and has since won the New Establishment Menswear prize at the Fashion Awards in 2023, the BFC/GQ Designer Fashion Fund in 2024 and the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund in 2026.

Early life and education

Saunders was born in Catford, in south-east London, to a large family of Caribbean descent, and grew up in the surrounding borough of Lewisham near her parents, grandparents and extended family; she has relatives in Jamaica whom she visited for family occasions. Her father worked as a plasterer, and she has credited a grandmother who sewed and an uncle who worked as a graphic designer with drawing her toward a creative career. before a master's degree at the Royal College of Art. On the recommendation of a tutor she had applied to the college, where she was taught by the head of the fashion program, Zowie Broach. Her graduate collection, "Personal Politics", was presented with a lookbook of portraits by the photographer Adama Jalloh and accompanied by the film Permission, directed by Akinola Davies Jr. She won the British Fashion Council's NEWGEN prize for emerging designers, and in 2020 was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list for art and culture.

Saunders designed the outfit worn by the singer Usher to the 2023 Met Gala, whose theme was Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty: a black satin corseted reverse blazer with a twist detail at the back, worn with detached white cotton sleeves. She attended the event alongside him. Nick Jonas wore the label to the 2025 Met Gala, She has dressed Harry Styles and Hailey Bieber. Her spring/summer 2025 collection was shown at the Bastille Design Centre in Paris.

In October 2025 Saunders released a four-piece capsule collection with Tate, consisting of a scarf, a hat, a jumper and a long-sleeved T-shirt drawing on the paintings The Good and Evil Angels and The Simoniac Pope by William Blake. The pieces were sold through the museum and designed as non-gendered; Saunders said working with an art institution allowed her to "slow down, research, and respond", and cast friends she had met at Tate events in the campaign.

For the autumn/winter 2025 season she showed "Dichotomy" in Paris, a collection examining movement and constraint that drew on archival footage of male Jamaican dancers, Robert Longo's Men in the Cities photographs and the slashed canvases of Steven Parrino. The presentation was staged with the artist Shanti Bell, with whom Saunders had previously worked on the Somerset House exhibition The Missing Thread.

In June 2026 Saunders won the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, which carries a grant of £150,000 together with business mentoring and professional services.

The following month she announced a spring 2027 collection of 30 pieces, "Meet You Before Sunrise", made with the creative company The Midnight Club. It was her first collaboration with a creative agency and the agency's first with a fashion designer, and it coincided with the company's tenth anniversary. The campaign paired oversized shirts, asymmetric draping and wide-leg trousers with knitwear and graphic streetwear. Selected pieces were offered for pre-order through her website, with the rest of the collection due in 2027.

Design approach

Saunders takes familiar garments and alters their construction: denim is twisted through the leg, shoulders are rolled or exaggerated, and prints reproduce the creases fabric acquires in wear.

Saunders won the BFC/GQ Designer Fashion Fund in 2024, receiving £100,000 and business mentoring; the other shortlisted designers were Bleue Burnham, Labrum London and Saul Nash. It was the tenth edition of the fund, and the award also carried pro bono legal services from the London firm Sheridans. She had won the New Establishment Menswear award at the 2023 Fashion Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London.