Grace Wales Bonner’s approach to fashion can sometimes feel more like that of an academic rather than a designer. Her collections for Wales Bonner, the brand she started in 2015, are informed by dazzlingly intensive research spanning critical theory, music, literature, history and mysticism. Her clever embrace of so many perspectives and personalities, and her proudly Afro-Atlantic approach to fashion, has made Ms. Wales Bonner, 33, an increasingly influential figure in field. This year, she began showing her collections in Paris, the creative and commercial epicenter of luxury fashion. But Ms. Wales Bonner is also a polymath with artistic ambitions outside fashion.

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Persons: Grace Wales, Wales Bonner, Haile Selassie, James Baldwin, Theaster Gates, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Moustapha Dimé, Terry Adkins Organizations: Adidas, Museum of Modern Art Locations: Harlem, Jamaica, Paris, New York, Betye Saar