Grace Wales Bonner, woman of the moment, is on the phone. We’re speaking for the first time since the fashion press and social media virtually stood up as one to applaud her appointment by Hermès as menswear designer. How thrilled everyone was to hear of her going to such an immensely prestigious French house! How brilliant and insanely rare it is to see a woman succeed another great woman! What an amazing match for a young designer who has spent a decade quietly revolutionizing classicism in menswear!
Wales Bonner greets my effusions with a slight silence. “I’m not starting till later in the year,” she cautioned. Véronique Nichanian shows her final Hermès men’s collection after a career of nearly four storied decades, and a greatly deserved celebration is anticipated on Saturday. Wales Bonner’s debut isn’t until a year from now, January 2027. Not galloping, not hype-ing, and being unshakably confident of one’s own position is the Hermès way. Ditto the ever-reserved character of the young British designer. She’s insisting she’s here to talk about her own fall 26 collection, not Hermès.
But she relents a little: “Hermès is such an incredible house and I’m really honored to be part of it,” she offered. “I think it feels very aligned with the kind of direction that I’ve carved myself, and just the idea of taking time and doing the right thing at the right time.” She’s very excited about the level of Hermès craftsmanship. With my own brand, I’ve had to be very resourceful, so to be able to actually go deeper and work with the house is like a dream. The possibilities are expansive.”
The nugget of news is that Wales Bonner will be continuing her brand while she travels to and fro between Paris and London to work at Hermès. The collection, released in a lookbook this season, is as intellectually studied in her quietly impactful style as ever. Named Morning Raga, it alludes to the work of the great Indian pioneer of brutalist and modernist architect Balkrishna Doshi.
“I was thinking about, I guess, more kind of Indian modernism and modernist architecture, an idea of modernism as a way of renegotiating and creating new identities,” she said. “I was thinking about something that can be quite kind of graphic, and in a way, like a kind of uniform.” A quick search of the grid and arch structures and the spectrum of browns in Doshi’s structures clues us into Wales Bonner’s palette, knit stitches, Madras checks, and jacquard patterns. “But I was trying not to be too specific about place, because I’m really interested in modernist architecture in a kind of post-colonial context.” Modernist landmarks are a part of the post-Independence histories of Ghana and Senegal, she noted.
“These new designs were coming at a time of independence. Great structures, new structures. I guess, it’s kind of a way of thinking that just allows for independent thinking and new optimistic ideas about what a new kind of society could look like.”
All this talk about the significance of architecture is much about the enduringly recognizable scaffolding and foundations of the Wales Bonner brand itself: the ceremonial features, her succinct expressions of casualness and formality, the structural supports of her long-term collaborators adidas and the Savile Row tailors Anderson Sheppard. A white diagonal stripe running across a brown polo shirt or leather bomber signals a dignitary’s sash. Beautifully, the tailcoat and tuxedo trousers, a Wales Bonner signature from the start, are now tailored in indigo linen with a linen wingtip-collar shirt, softened by washing. “It’s always about somehow working with some element of classicism, and then having some kind of disruption within that. But also having the kind of reassurance of making as well, and the history and heritage of these partners.”
Recently, she’s added John Smedley knitwear, founded in 1784 in Derbyshire, to her small circle of suppliers, revelling in its archive and fine British quality. She loves working with “very, very specialized people.” That surely augurs well for how she’ll get on with the unbelievably specialised ranks of craftspeople at Hermès. When the time comes.
