There was not a single person better qualified to dress stars at the 2025 Met Gala than Grace Wales Bonner and, when you think of her, the immediate place your mind is likely to go is that very event. There, the designer dressed a standout roster of cultural icons: Lewis Hamilton, FKA Twigs, Jeff Goldblum, Omar Apollo, Antwaun Sargent, and Tyler Mitchell bore her rich tailoring and culturally-rich designs to embody the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”. She didn’t just meet the moment through her designs, she completely personified it – Hamilton wore pieces that were thorough homages to Black heritage, while FKA Twigs shimmered in a tribute to Josephine Baker. Goldblum’s ensemble fused jazz-age flair (and we would expect nothing less from the actor) concurrently with minimalism, and Omar Apollo’s tailoring evoked those lush sparkling textures and bold animal print.
Now, due to a very significant appointment in the fashion world indeed, Wales Bonner will be the first black woman to ever head design in a major fashion house after taking over the creative direction of menswear for Hermès. It comes after a very lengthy tenure of almost four decades from her predecessor, Véronique Nichanian, but will mark a compelling and fresh new beginning. While the wait for Wales Bonner’s newest collection will feel significantly longer than those of the latest appointments – many of which will have their anticipated shows in Milan, while we have to wait til 2027 for her first Hermès launch – it’ll certainly be worth the wait.
Wales Bonner has an incredibly lengthy and praiseworthy academic resume as a graduate from Central Saint Martins, and the honours began rolling in shortly after her graduation in 2014 – her BA collection Afrique was granted the L’Oréal Professionel Talent Award, and she won in the menswear category for emerging talent at the 2015 British Talent Awards. Additionally, she recently won the British Menswear Designer of the Year award in 2024. But it’s not just her schooling that has shaped her; Wales Bonner has always drawn inspiration from the cultures she has been immersed in since birth due to her British and
Jamaican heritage, evident in her previous work and her own label Wales Bonner. Black narratives are deftly woven into her brand and her individual hand as a designer, and its aesthetic launched her into the fashion stratosphere with her Autumn/Winter 2015 collection, Ebonics. The line was a masterclass in combining themes of Black cultural identity with expert craftsmanship. Her collaboration with Adidas also cannot go without mention. Her ability to translate deep historical and cultural narratives directly into luxury is a mastery not many possess and, if anything, allows her to transcend the label of simply a fashion designer – she operates through fabric as a crucial voice for her own story and those of so many others.
“I am deeply honoured to be entrusted with the role of Creative Director of Hermes Menswear,” Wales Bonner said in an Instagram post. “It is a dream realized to embark on this new chapter, following in a lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers.”
Wales Bonner Spring Summer 2026, ‘Jewel’. Image via Wales Bonner.
It’s easy to state this for a lot of designers who draw on personal experience, but Wales Bonner’s Hermès will likely be a masterclass in storytelling. For a designer so well known for weaving diasporic narratives into precise tailoring, she’s more than poised to infuse the house’s menswear with a new kind of soulfulness. We’ll be in conversation with jazz age elegance, and taking advantage of that equestrian tradition somewhat fused with a global modernity. Her past work suggests she’ll treat Hermès not as a blank slate, but as a vessel – and I certainly don’t see the brand losing its essence. With her debut collection slated for January 2027, we’ll be seeing that aforementioned wait in runway presentations, but the anticipation only heightens the sense that something quietly yet beautifully unconventional is on the horizon.
