In a 2019 System magazine interview, Grace Wales Bonner praised menswear designer Raf Simons for being “very uncompromising,” saying “it is a really beautiful thing to see in this era.”
The quality dear to Wales Bonner is also prized at Hermès, the 188-year-old French luxury house famed for its rigorous and meticulous ways that this week appointed her its new creative director of men’s ready-to-wear collections, making her the only Black woman to lead design at a major European luxury house. The appointment gives the Birkin bag maker a 35-year-old designer known for her unique way of melding fine tailoring with broad cultural research, with a string of awards under her belt.
“With Wales Bonner, Hermès will have a creative talent who knows how to mix the exacting standards of Western luxury, which include the utmost attention to craft and quality, with diverse cultural influences whether they’re from Africa, India or the Caribbean,” said Serge Carreira, an affiliated professor of fashion and luxury at Sciences Po in Paris. “She has an idea of beauty that’s very contemporary and singular, as opposed to stilted, with a strong attention to detail.”
Wales Bonner is replacing Veronique Nichanian, 71, who has held that role for 37 years and will present her last menswear show in January, Hermès said. Wales Bonner’s appointment is part of a large-scale renewal in creative talent at the world’s biggest luxury houses. In just the past year, new designers have landed at Celine, Christian Dior Couture, Chanel, Gucci, Loewe, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and Fendi, a changing of the guard that has sometimes coincided with a generational shift.
For Hermès, the Wales Bonner appointment is something of a novelty. In contrast with other fashion labels that sign on designers who are stars in their own right, Hermès has traditionally cultivated a strong artistic culture internally, with very few of its creative directors having reputations that outshine the brand.
Wales Bonner’s “take on contemporary fashion, craft and culture will contribute to shaping Hermès men’s style,” Pierre-Alexis Dumas, an Hermès heir who oversees the label’s artistic direction, said in a press release this week.
Wales Bonner, born in London to an English mother and Jamaican father, is the founder of her eponymous label and one of the masterminds behind the runaway success of Adidas AG’s retro three-striped Samba trainers. Her rise on the global fashion scene has been meteoric.
Right after she graduated from London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins in 2014, she created her menswear line Wales Bonner, soon racking up plaudits for her work. She won the ‘Emerging Menswear Designer’ at the British Fashion Awards in 2015, followed by the LVMH Young Designer Prize in 2016. She was the winner of the British Fashion Council/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund in 2019, the same year she curated an exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries in London that explored rituals and religious practices in Afro-Caribbean cultures. She has dressed the Formula-1 driver Lewis Hamilton for the Met Gala.
She “proposes a distinct notion of cultural luxury that infuses European heritage with an Afro Atlantic spirit,” according to her website, which also alludes to the “soulful tailoring” of her brand.
On the eve of the pandemic in January 2020, she previewed a collection with Adidas during the London Fashion Week. At the time, the German brand was in need of new creative energy following a years-long sales boom for its retro Superstar and Stan Smith trainers. As the momentum of those models faded, the brand became dangerously reliant on its Yeezy collaboration with the rapper Ye to drive profits. That franchise imploded in late 2022 following Ye’s string of hateful, antisemitic rhetoric, leading critics to accuse Adidas of lacking innovative products.
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But Wales Bonner’s creative work had been setting the stage for Adidas’s next round of success all along. Her initial collection with Adidas, which launched in November 2020, had explored “1970s subcultures from the perspective of Caribbean youth in London.” She offered a colorful new take on apparel and, crucially, a fresh-looking pair of black Sambas that featured hand-crocheted stripes and an extended tongue. Initially retailed for about $180, that model is selling today for $1,176 on the resale platform StockX.
The Samba boom that took off in early 2023 continues to perform well for Adidas, thanks in large part to a host of spiffed up versions that she designed featuring studs, animal prints and metallic sheen.
She may be the “most popular designer now in the luxury area,” Adidas Chief Executive Officer Bjoern Gulden said about her last year. “Everybody wants to work with her, and her loyalty to us has been great.”
It was not immediately clear what will become of her links with Adidas and whether she will keep her own label going once she starts at Hermès. Her first show for Hermès will be in January 2027. The collection that is normally presented in June during Paris menswear week will be overseen by the studio as the group transitions from one designer to the other.
Wales Bonner won’t be the sole female designer at Hermès. The women’s line has been overseen by Nadege Vanhee, who has held that role for more than a decade now. Although Hermès’ biggest division remains leather goods and saddlery, the ready-to-wear division has found significant success in recent years.