French luxury goods purveyor Hermès has named English clothing designer Grace Wales Bonner as its new creative director of menswear. She will retain her eponymous label, Wales Bonner, which she started in 2014 following her graduation from Central Saint Martins in London and which, according to its website, “infuses European luxury with an Afro Atlantic spirit.”
Known for combining Caribbean style—in particular that of the Windrush generation of the 1970s—with British tailoring, Wales Bonner has been the recipient of numerous awards, including Emerging Menswear Designer at the British Fashion Awards in 2015, the LVMH Young Designer Prize in 2016, and the CFDA International Men’s Designer of the Year in 2021.
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Two of Wales Bonner’s men’s outfits, a tracksuit for Adidas paired with an extra-long tailored shirt, and a pair of velvet flares with a matching jacket embellished with cowrie shells, were standouts of this year’s exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York.
In the catalog for that show, Wales Bonner name-checks some of her many fashion lodestars—among them Amiri Baraka, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, André Leon Talley, Augustus Pablo, and Jean-Michel Basquiat—writing, “The best of Black style emanates from a soulfulness resounding in the way that a person embodies clothing, bringing [to quote Frantz Fanon] ‘invention into existence.’”
Nancy MacDonell, a fashion historian and author of Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion (2024), told ARTnews, “This is a savvy move the part of Hermès. The brand is ne-plus-ultra of French luxury and Wales Bonner is a designer who has shown herself willing to engage with the idea of what contemporary elegance means.”
In addition to her work as a designer, Wales Bonner curated the 2011 exhibition “A Time for New Dreams” at London‘s Serpentine Gallery and the 2023 show “Spirit Movers” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Both explored cultural and aesthetic practices in the African diaspora.
Wales Bonner will present her first collection for Hermès in January 2027.
