In 109 years, Balenciaga never put a woman in charge of its design. Kering, the group that owns it, has now handed the house to Martine Rose, a British-Jamaican designer who started her own label in London in 2007 and never stopped running it.
She is also the second Black woman to take the creative helm of a major European luxury house, Black Enterprise reported, after Grace Wales Bonner was named to Hermès menswear in October 2025. Two names is a short list.
Rose starts Nov. 16, in Paris, succeeding Pierpaolo Piccioli. She will oversee the men’s, women’s and couture collections.
She knows the house. From 2015 to 2018 she was a menswear consultant to Demna, then Balenciaga’s creative director. Her own work comes out of London subculture, football terraces, music and the way Black British men dress, and it has reached Nike, Supreme and Clarks through collaborations. She is known for upending ideas of masculinity, and for her handling of proportion and fabric.
“It is a true privilege to be appointed creative director of Balenciaga, a house with an extraordinary heritage,” Rose said in the announcement.
Luca de Meo, Kering’s chief executive, said she “embodies this spirit with a fresh, fearless and deeply contemporary vision.” He described Balenciaga as “a House of radical creativity, challenging conventions and redefining the boundaries of fashion.”
Read the corporate language for what it is. Luxury houses are chasing younger buyers and cultural credibility, and much of that culture was made by Black designers, musicians and street style the industry borrowed for decades without hiring them. Putting the person who came from that world in charge, with her name on the door of a house this size, is a different deal from putting her on a campaign.
What it does not settle is the pipeline. One appointment does not mean the next Black designer will be handed a house, or that Black seamstresses, pattern cutters and buyers will see the doors open behind her. The industry should treat Rose as the start of a list that is not counted on one hand.
She takes over on Nov. 16.
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