Grace Prince
February 17, 2026
Grace Prince’s practice has been an inspiration to us for a long time. We are particularly drawn to the way she selects and works with materials, and her clean-cut finishes that still preserve the visible trace of the hand. She also carries out most of the craftsmanship herself and collaborates with local artisans for certain techniques.
Following a creative exchange and the arrival of her sketches and mock-ups, The Sequence Collection began to take shape. This project feels significant to us, as it marks the first time we feature design objects.
Recently, she spoke with us about her work and reflected on her experience of this collaboration.
This collaboration feels particularly organic. What was it about paloma wool’s universe that resonated with your own practice?
I have always admired paloma wool's design language, and when the collaboration came through, it immediately felt like a natural fit. That feeling only continued as we moved into the design process, each idea I would bring forward, paloma wool would run with, and vice versa. There was a lot of trust, going both ways.
How did you approach designing objects and clothes that would live both within the brand’s language and your own practice?
That wasn’t so hard. I already had a few paloma wool pieces in my wardrobe and felt that our tastes were aligned. What I did find was that, on a couple of occasions, I would subconsciously move the work to be ‘more paloma wool’ and then the design team would correct me and say ‘but actually we feel if we move in that direction it would feel less Grace Prince’. In this way, it really felt like a 50/50 collaboration, where both brand identities were heard and recognised.
Inox, leather, knit, and wood all coexist in The Sequence Collection. As someone whose practice involves material research, how did you navigate the dialogue and the specific behaviours of these materials?
The material research side of my practice is where I feel the most confident. The intersection of material play and the process of finding the delicate gestures that can arise from this is what motivates me. Stainless steel and bronze are my staple materials, and leather and knit are paloma wool’s staple materials, so these felt right from the beginning. But yes, the most interesting part was how to combine them, and this arrived through a couple of intense summer months in the studio, asking this question, but more so, understanding how to push the materials to a certain limit. This is my second motivation…
When paloma wool approached me, I knew I wanted to work with bending metal. In my practice, I often go through moments of material fascination, and at the time, I was researching industrial bent metal and seeing how far this process could be pushed. As a form-finding exercise, I welded found pre-bent metal pieces to build prototypes of the buckles, bag handle, door handle and stool. Once I had the finalised forms, I approached the Swiss metal-bending company Pfalzberger AG to bend the metal in one form (rather than smaller sections welded together). This had its own challenges, and in the end, due to their tight curves, they had to be hand-bent with a manual jig and custom-made parts to reach the tightly bent corners. We really pushed the bending possibilities - and this is the goal I always aim for when approaching any project.
Many of these pieces—door knobs, hooks, hangers, belts—sit very close to the body or require frequent touch. Was tactility or the sense of intimacy a central theme in your design of these elements?
I think this ties into the material research approach, pushing the boundaries of a material. I hope and am glad if this develops a certain tactility and curiosity, and perhaps we almost force this a little in the works, for example, the belt buckle closes at an angle, so it requires new attention from the wearer.
There’s a clear attentiveness in your work to tension and how materials perform under pressure or weight. Where do you feel this sensitivity was first formed?
I believe it stems from a certain childhood nostalgia for exploring materials and finding their breaking points. I feel we all have this memory, but perhaps I am more sensitive to it. For my work, it's important to hold onto this naivety; to ‘still discover’ materials away from our recognisable patterns. Sometimes I stop myself from researching a material too much online or in books, as it's first important to just play and try things out, without first understanding their limits.
You often speak about the importance of function. How do you personally define it? Is it purely a practical requirement, or does it include an emotional or sensory dimension for you?
Prioritising function in my work is an additional challenge when researching subjects such as fragility, absence, attentiveness, and tension. These subjects can be explored and can sit very strongly on their own, but to bring the added element of function - to be able to actually live with these sensations - I feel, adds an extra poetic value and yes, sensory dimension.
Your work is often very clean in form, yet it retains subtle handmade details. How important is it to you that "the hand" remains visible, even when creating garments and pieces for a collection like The Sequence Collection?
Yes, very important, because I feel it is in these ‘imperfect details’ where the juxtapositions between materials, surfaces, and alignment can best exist. This is not an industrial production; these are limited, and in this way, the hand can be present. It’s quite unique and holds a different value that we see less and less. That is why, in all my collections, I aim to collaborate with and thus support different craft ateliers, and why I have carried out research trips to India, Bahrain, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany to find such places. I did this through my own organisation, as well as through my work as a material researcher at the ETH University in Zurich for the design studio Material Gesture, under Prof. Anne Holtrop.
Some of the ateliers I visited were on the verge of closing. One extreme example was an artisan I visited in Japan who said he was the last person in the country hand-polishing bronze in the craft of the shinto kagami. I have to say, though, he didn't seem disappointed by it, and he didn't want to take on an apprentice; he felt it was a natural progression. But it made me terribly upset, as I found his work, experience, and methods quite breathtaking.
Was there anything in this project that pushed you into unfamiliar territory or forced you to rethink your usual way of working?
I had never worked with leather before, so I didn't know how to ‘play’ with it when building the prototypes. In the end, I made the handbag prototype using a large white rubber elastic band to mimic the leather. In retrospect, this worked perfectly as the rubber could be stretched more than leather, so there was an automatic assumption of tension. I sent the elastic prototype to paloma wool to be developed by the design team. When the elastic was moved into leather, these pulls softened, but that’s ok, it's part of the process of adding and reducing.
After working so closely with clothing and wearable forms again, has this collaboration shifted how you think about the future of your practice?
This collaboration was a fantastic experience, and I would enjoy working with wearable forms again. One other aspect I enjoyed was working on the set design for the window display, photoshoot, and video. Regarding the future of my practice, I would like to work with larger spatial arrangements, moving my work further into interior design, refining my style to retain its poetic sensory values but better exercising its minimalism to create calm, warm, and practical spaces.
