5 Things to Know About Hermes’ New Menswear Creative Director Grace Wales Bonner

For the past few years, her name has been whispered in fashion forums, shouted on TikTok moodboards, and floated every time a major house needed a creative director. Now it’s official: Grace Wales Bonner is taking over Hermes menswear, succeeding Veronique Nichanian after a monumental 37-year tenure.

This isn’t just a creative shift—it feels like a cultural reset. Wales Bonner, 35, is now the first Black woman to lead menswear at a major French luxury house, and she looks set to bring an entirely new lens to the Hermes mythos: scholarly, soulful, and deeply attuned to identity. As the Jamaican-British designer said in the announcement, “It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter.”

Here’s your primer on fashion’s new north star:

She Founded Her Own Label, Wales Bonner, 10 Years Ago

Fresh out of Central Saint Martins in 2014, Wales Bonner’s graduate collection, Afrique, was an exploration of Black male identity, marrying European tailoring with African aesthetics. Her accompanying dissertation, Black on Black, dug into the works of artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Charlie Parker — a preview of the cerebral, culturally conscious lens that would define her eponymous label.

Collabs Are Kind of Her Thing

Wales Bonner thrives on collaborations. She’s teamed up with artists, photographers, and even fellow designers — including a nod from Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri — to elevate her runway presentations. Most notably, her long-standing partnership with Adidas since 2020 helped spark the revival of the Samba sneaker, with her playful interpretations in leopard, metallic silver, and crocodile textures turning the classic shoe into a cult object all over again.

She’s Having A Massive Year

Before taking over Hermes, she flexed her cultural influence at the 2025 MET Gala. Tasked with dressing a star-studded lineup — think Lewis Hamilton, FKA Twigs, and Jeff Goldblum — for the Superfine: Tailoring Black Style exhibition, she proved her knack for merging heritage and contemporary flair, all while putting Black style at the forefront of global fashion conversation.

Her Accolades Are Next-Level

By 35, Wales Bonner’s trophy case is already impressive. From winning the BFA Emerging Menswear Designer award a year after launching her label to snagging the LVMH Young Designer Prize (the first menswear designer to do so) and the CFDA International Men’s Designer of the Year in 2021, her career trajectory has been meteoric. Add an MBE in 2022 for her impact in fashion, and it’s clear she’s been shaping the industry on multiple fronts.

She Manifested This Years Ago

Wales Bonner has always been clear about her dream to work with tailoring, even hinting at Hermes back in 2019: “A dream of mine would be to work with a tailoring brand, as that is at the core of what I am doing,” she told System magazine. With her layered approach — combining art, literature, history, and culture — it’s exciting to imagine what she’ll do next. Her first Hermes collection is set to debut in January 2027, and the fashion world is already holding its breath (and no, that’s not hyperbole).