Grace Wales Bonner was born in 1990 in London to an English mother and a Jamaican father, and studied at Central Saint Martins, graduating in 2014. Her graduation collection, exploring Black masculinity through references to West Africa, India and the Caribbean, was immediately noticed, and she founded her label, Wales Bonner, the same year.

Her work has been described as research-led: each collection is built around literature, music, history and art, and translated into precise tailoring, crochet, embroidered denim and sportswear. She won the Emerging Menswear award at the British Fashion Awards in 2015 and the LVMH Prize in 2016, and in 2019 curated the exhibition A Time for New Dreams at the Serpentine Galleries in London.

Since 2020 she has designed a long-running collaboration with adidas Originals, whose versions of the Samba and other classic shoes became some of the most sought-after sneakers of the decade. She won the CFDA Award for International Men's Designer of the Year in 2021 and British Menswear Designer of the Year at the Fashion Awards in 2024. At the 2025 Met Gala, themed around the exhibition Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, she dressed the co-chair Lewis Hamilton, FKA Twigs, Jeff Goldblum and others.

In October 2025 Hermès named her creative director of men's ready-to-wear, succeeding Véronique Nichanian, who had led the department for 37 years. She is the first Black woman to lead design at a major fashion house, according to the New York Times. She will present her first Hermès collection in January 2027, and continues to run Wales Bonner alongside the role, working between London and Paris.