Hermès Picks Grace Wales Bonner to Design Menswear

PARIS — British designer Grace Wales Bonner has been named creative director of men’s ready-to-wear at French leather goods giant Hermès, becoming the first Black woman to serve as creative director at a major luxury house.

Wales Bonner succeeds veteran designer Véronique Nichanian, who is exiting the company after 37 years in the role.

Wales Bonner, who has Jamaican ancestry, studied at London’s Central Saint Martins before rising to prominence with her namesake label, founded in 2014. Known for an intellectual, even academic, approach to style, her work has explored a broad range of references linked to post-colonial narratives and the Black diaspora through tailoring, sportswear and a lucrative sneakers and streetwear collaboration with Adidas.

Previous collections cited photographer Malick Sidibé’s portraits of post-independence life in Bamako and the 1970s West African dance scene while incorporating craft techniques ranging from Savile Row tailoring to beadwork and crochet.

Wales Bonner won the LVMH Prize in 2016, followed by accolades from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and British Fashion Council. In 2022, she was made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to fashion.

Wales Bonner started her brand with menswear collections before expanding to include womenswear in 2018. She has staged her fashion shows in Paris since joining the FHCM’s official calendar in January 2023.

Her collaboration with Adidas played a role in bringing “Terrace sneakers” back in fashion, with flat-soled styles like Samba powering sales for the German brand as well as showing up on the runway in recent seasons at Prada, Dries Van Noten and more.

Wales Bonner’s designs were included at the Met’s Costume Institute 2025 exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” and she dressed Lewis Hamilton for its opening gala. She has also curated exhibitions for London’s Serpentine Gallery and New York’s MoMA.

In a year of creative shakeups that has seen most of luxury fashion’s biggest brands change designers, the industry has been criticised for choosing to reshuffle familiar names who are mostly white and male. Hermès — a tradition-steeped company still controlled by the sixth generation of its founding family — may not have been the most expected place for a breakthrough appointment.

The brand does have a history of tapping thought-provoking creatives to lead its fashion lines. The radical, conceptual Belgian designer Martin Margiela revamped Hermès’ womenswear from the late 1990s, succeeded by campy couture technician Jean Paul Gaultier, known for his inclusive representations of gender and sexuality. Christophe Lemaire cited workwear, post-war intellectuals and Asian martial arts; Nadège Vanhee (the brand’s current womenswear chief since 2014) sublimates the brand’s equestrian heritage to create a modern vestaire, injecting sportiness, sensuality, hints of punk and kink.

Meanwhile, Véronique Nichanian has honed the brand’s menswear image since 1988 with a forward-looking, polished take on French non-chalance, integrating technical innovations and ultra-luxurious expressions of craft in a trend-agnostic yet youthful wardrobe.

“[Wales Bonner’s] take on contemporary fashion, craft and culture will contribute to shaping Hermès men’s style, melding the house’s heritage with a confident look on the now,” said Hermès general artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas, who oversees the brand’s various creative chiefs. “Grace’s appetite and curiosity for artistic practice strongly resonate with Hermès’ creative mindset and approach. We are at the start of an enriching mutual dialogue.”

Soft-spoken, meticulous and research-obsessed, Wales Bonner has even publicly stated that she hoped to design for a house like Hermès one day, speaking to System magazine in 2019.

“It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter, following in a lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers. I wish to express my gratitude to Pierre-Alexis Dumas and Axel Dumas for the opportunity to bring my vision to this magical house,” the designer said in a statement.

Hermès’ has outperformed the broader luxury sector in recent years, buoyed by persistent demand for its flagship Birkin bags as well as more accessibly-priced stables like double tour bracelets and anchor chain jewellery. Sales in Hermès’s ready-to-wear and accessories division grew 15 percent last year to €4.4 billion.

Editor's Note: This story has been modified on Tuesday, 21st October at 5:05pm B.S.T. A previous version of this story misattributed a quote in AnOther magazine to Ms. Wales Bonner.