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In 2019, the designer Grace Wales Bonner told an interviewer that it was a dream of hers “to work with a brand like Hermès”. Six years later, the 35-year-old Briton was named creative director of menswear for the French luxury company, becoming the first female black designer to lead a major fashion house.
Wales Bonner will succeed the French designer Véronique Nichanian, 71, who has headed the men’s division for 37 years, and her debut collection will be shown in January 2027.
Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the general artistic director of Hermès, said Wales Bonner’s “appetite and curiosity for artistic practice strongly resonate with Hermès’ creative mindset and approach”, adding: “We are at the start of an enriching mutual dialogue.”
Wales Bonner founded her eponymous brand in 2014 straight after graduating from Central Saint Martins college of art in London. Known for menswear, she introduced a womenswear division in 2018 and is expected to continue to helm both alongside her new role.
In fashion circles, her appointment at a storied house comes as no surprise; her name has been mentioned regularly as a frontrunner for previous top job openings, including at Givenchy and Louis Vuitton.
Kenya Hunt, the editor-in-chief of Elle UK, said her appointment was “long overdue”, describing her label, “with its intelligent design and attention to craft, as a consistently bright spot in British fashion”.
Outside the fashion industry, not everyone will be familiar with Wales Bonner’s name, but they will be aware of her designs. Her collaborations with Adidas Originals are the reason why Samba and Superstar sneakers are now worn by everyone from Rihanna to Rishi Sunak.
Reworking and revitalising the styles since 2020, Wales Bonner has reimagined them in everything from silver foil to leopard print. Previous launches have sold out within hours, sell for triple the original prices on resale sites and continue to heavily influence dupe culture. In 2023, the search engine platform Lyst named the Samba, which was a style originally for the German football team in 1949, as “the shoe of the year”.
Wales Bonner’s work is known for exploring black style, identity and its cultural legacy. In a recent conversation with the scholar Horace Ballard, she described her role in fashion as similar to a jazz player; a musician may not have invented their choice of instrument but they can create their own new style.
Taking an academic approach to research, her work sits at the intersection of fashion and art. She looks to explore the archetypes of clothing, riffing on everything from Savile Row tailoring to preppy collegiate coding. Her references and inspiration are vast, including the former Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie, Notting Hill carnival, the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and the actor Joséphine Baker. She has also collaborated with the Jamaican national football team and the painter Lubaina Himid.
In 2019, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, wore a Wales Bonner white trench dress when she and Prince Harry introduced their son, Archie, to the world. In May, a velvet suit embroidered with cowrie shells from the designer’s autumn/winter collection was chosen to be spotlighted at the Met’s Costume Institute 2025 exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. At the accompanying Met Gala event, considered one of the most powerful events in fashion and masterminded by Anna Wintour, Wales Bonner made her debut dressing the Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, the singer FKA twigs and the actor Jeff Goldblum.
Two years after founding her label she won the LVMH prize for young fashion designers, the equivalent of a Bafta rising star award, after impressing a judging panel that included Karl Lagerfeld, Jonathan Anderson and Phoebe Philo. In 2021, she picked up the CFDA award for international men’s designer of the year, and in 2024 she was awarded another gong at the Fashion awards.
Wales Bonner was born in south-east London, the middle child of three sisters; her mother is a business consultant while her father, who was born in Jamaica, is a lawyer. Her paternal grandfather was a tailor who came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation. She credits taking the bus as a teenager from her home in Dulwich to her secondary school in Tooting as a key influence as she observed various communities coming together and mixing styles.
Speaking to the Financial Times in April, she said: “You can be wearing something traditional but with sneakers. That duality, hybridity – it’s about being between two things. That’s the space I think is interesting. I’ve always resisted being locked in.”
