In the past two years, amidst all the designer comings and goings, one name was on everyone’s lips but had so far remained elusive, a fantasy. It was Grace Wales Bonner, the 35 year-old designer who has quietly revolutionized menswear since she launched her namesake label after graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2014. Today, she was announced as the new creative director of Hermès menswear, succeeding Véronique Nichanian, who will show her last collection in January after 37 years in the job.

It’s a surprising announcement only because as the game of musical chairs reached its pinnacle with a spring 2026 season that included 15 designer debuts, the industry had come to believe that perhaps Wales Bonner was more interested in growing her namesake label. Yes and no. Even as she prepares to lead Hermès into the future, she will continue her namesake brand.

Since her debut menswear collection on the spring 2017 calendar, Wales Bonner distinguished herself from other designers of her generation through her steady and serious approach to storytelling and her interest in classic tailoring which held in its exacting gaze the Black male experience. That first collection looked to the 1930 crowning of Haile Selassie as emperor of Ethiopia with short capes delicately embellished with cowrie shells and ultra-slim three-button jackets worn with stovepipe trousers in luscious navy velvet. A year later she cited the work of James Baldwin, with a collection that had a raw sexuality to it, featuring leather suits worn with nothing underneath. There was the “Lovers Rock” collection which looked to her own Jamaican father’s history with the cultural movement that sprouted in London in the 1970s, and collaborations with artists like Kerry James Marshall, Lubaina Himid, and Kendrick Lamar. Her collections are big on intellectual propositions but never at the expense of the clothes themselves, which remain resolutely desirable, wearable, and relevant.

In 2020 she launched a wildly successful collaboration with Adidas Originals, ongoing to this day, which has proven to be deeply influential, not only because her sneaker drops sell out immediately, but because they’ve spurred a slew of other designer sneaker collaborations, and undoubtedly caused the great Samba supremacy of the 2020s.

All the while, Wales Bonner has remained something of an enigmatic figure. She has no personal social media presence, choosing to let the world get to know her through her work, and special projects that speak to her interests. These have included curating both “Grace Wales Bonner: A Time for New Dreams” at the Serpentine Galleries in London, which focused on her “rigorous research across multiple geographies and temporalities,” leading up to her fall 2019 collection, and “Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner—Spirit Movers,” a special exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that explored the way “sound and movement can be captured through different forms,” and staging “Togetherness,” a series of musical performances, most recently at the Guggenheim which featured musicians such as the Nigerian duo The Cavemen, the singer Amaaraw, and a South African a cappella group The Joy among many others.