Grace Wales Bonner’s pre-Hermès collaborations: Marketing goldmines

A rising visionary in fashion

Grace Wales Bonner, a 35-year-old British-Jamaican designer who has been quietly revolutionizing menswear since launching her label in 2014, is now set to take the helm of Hermès’s menswear. Before this prestigious appointment, Wales Bonner built her reputation through a series of high-impact collaborations that bridged the worlds of luxury, sportswear, and street culture. Each partnership aligned seamlessly with her brand’s Afro-Atlantic aesthetic and generated significant buzz: from products selling out in hours to frenzied social media trends.

Adidas Originals Partnership – Revival of the Samba

Wales Bonner’s most famous collaboration kicked off in 2020 with Adidas Originals, yielding a string of capsule collections that became instant sensations. Her retro-inspired reinterpretations of Adidas classics like the Samba and Superstar effortlessly blended her Afro-Atlantic design heritage with sportswear cool, capturing the zeitgeist of the decade. Each sneaker drop ignited a craze: pairs would sell out within hours (often reselling for triple their original price on secondary markets) and her designs are widely credited with driving the comeback of the Adidas Samba as the defining must-have sneaker of the 2020s.

The numbers back up the hype. Lyst, the fashion analytics platform, named the Adidas Samba its 2023 “Shoe of the Year” thanks to the surge in demand. On social media, the trend exploded: videos tagged #adidassamba amassed hundreds of millions of views on TikTok as fashion influencers and celebrities from Rihanna to Hailey Bieber adopted the style. Adidas’s own CEO even highlighted the craze, calling the Samba the hottest sneaker on the market, on a March 2023 earnings call, as the company scrambled to meet the overwhelming demand. By infusing 1970s Caribbean inspirations and impeccable attention to detail into Adidas’s heritage silhouettes, Wales Bonner achieved a rare feat, cultural cachet coupled with commercial payoff. The partnership boosted Adidas’s appeal to fashion-forward audiences while elevating Wales Bonner’s profile from niche designer to global trendsetter. Recent Wales Bonner x Adidas releases continued to sell out within minutes; select pairs have fetched over 600 US dollars on resale sites. Retailer Stadium Goods reported a tenfold spike in Samba sales in late 2022, underscoring how this collaboration turned a classic sneaker into a full-blown phenomenon.

Luxury Crossovers – Dior and Manolo Blahnik

Wales Bonner also ventured into high-fashion territory through savvy collaborations. In 2019, she teamed up with legendary shoemaker Manolo Blahnik to create bespoke footwear for her runway shows. The results included exquisitely crafted slippers adorned with beads and cowhide details, fusing Blahnik’s signature glamour with Wales Bonner’s eclectic elegance. This partnership lent her brand an added aura of luxury craftsmanship, earning glowing editorial praise and aligning her menswear-rooted label with red-carpet-caliber style.

Around the same time, Christian Dior invited Wales Bonner to reimagine its iconic Bar jacket and New Look skirt for the house’s Resort 2020 collection. She delivered a lean black tailored suit trimmed with raffia embroideries – an imaginative blend of European couture refinement with Caribbean handcraft. The success of this one-off Dior look signaled to the industry that Wales Bonner’s vision could harmonize with top luxury houses, greatly bolstering her brand’s credibility.

Streetwear Synergy – Stüssy Capsule

Wales Bonner continued breaking new ground with unexpected pairings. In September 2025, just before the Hermès announcement, she revealed a surprise capsule collection with California streetwear pioneer Stüssy. This high–low fusion married her trademark diasporic British tailoring with Stüssy’s surf-skate casual staples in a way that felt both “beachy and preppy”. The limited collection, featuring everything from sharp double-breasted blazers with neoprene hoodie inserts to leopard-print jumpers and studded stonewash denim – was lauded by critics as an accessible yet elevated triumph for Stüssy, one that broadened its young audience’s fashion horizons while putting Wales Bonner on the radar of global streetwear aficionados. The capsule (100-300 pounds) quickly sold out on both brands’ websites, proving the power of cross-pollinating luxury design with street cred. On social media, the collaboration’s sun-kissed, collegiate-meets-cool aesthetic earned rave engagement, reinforcing Wales Bonner’s knack for generating viral fashion moments across diverse style genres.

Marketing side of these collaborations

Each of these partnerships delivered outsized marketing impact by pairing authenticity with opportunity. For example:

• Adidas Originals: Wales Bonner’s sneaker venture with Adidas transformed a heritage shoe into a contemporary fashion phenomenon, igniting a worldwide trend and sneaker culture frenzy. The big social media buzz was caused by the accessibility of the sneakers. Even though the collaboration was quickly sold out, Adidas used the momentum to also boost the regular sneaker collection. Like that the Samba silhouette was quickly seen all over social media.

• Dior & Manolo Blahnik: Her luxury collaborations infused her brand with artisan prestige and introduced her work to new high-fashion audiences, elevating her profile and credibility in elite circles. Collaborations like these connect heritage with a fresh perspective. Causing not only an introduction of the new designer but also bringing a younger or different audience to rediscover the brands.

• Stüssy: Her streetwear capsule proved she can set trends on the streets as much as on the runway, broadening her reach to hype-driven young consumers and tastemakers. Marketingwise connecting designer and streetwear, gives both sides a bigger visibility as well as audience. Especially when it's unpredictable, it drives social media buzz.

Collaborations like those with Grace Wales Bonner demonstrate how strategic partnerships can serve as powerful marketing tools for brands. By aligning with designers who bring cultural depth, fresh aesthetics, and authentic narratives, companies tap into new audiences and reinvigorate legacy products with contemporary relevance. These collaborations create buzz not just through limited-edition hype, but through storytelling that resonates across social media and global markets. When done right, they bridge brand identity with cultural momentum—turning fashion into dialogue and products into status symbols.