Words by On Monday, Nov. 16, Martine Rose starts work in Paris as creative director of Balenciaga. She will be the first woman to lead the house in its 109-year history.
Kering, Balenciaga’s parent company, announced the appointment on Nov. 6, a day after confirming that Pierpaolo Piccioli was leaving after 18 months. In the company’s release, Rose called the job “a true privilege” and said she was committed to honoring the legacy of the designers before her. She will oversee both men’s and women’s collections.
Rose is also only the second Black woman to lead a major European fashion house, The Guardian noted, after Grace Wales Bonner was named men’s creative director at Hermès in 2025.
A south London menswear designer
Rose was born in south London to a Jamaican father who worked as an accountant and a British mother who had been a nurse. She did a foundation year at Camberwell College of Arts and studied fashion at Middlesex University, graduating in 2002. After a short-lived T-shirt line with a friend, she launched her own label in 2007. In 2011 she got funding and mentoring through the Fashion East incubator’s Newgen program, the same path that helped Kim Jones and Simone Rocha.
Her name became shorthand for a specific London sensibility: football shirts reworked as fashion, very baggy jeans, references to reggae and northern soul, and men’s tailoring that played with what a “normal” man’s wardrobe looks like. Kering’s release describes work “rooted in subculture, music, identity and the social codes of dress,” and says her shows treat casting and location as part of the clothes.
The venues get talked about as much as the clothes. She staged a show in a north London cul-de-sac in 2019, presented a collection at her daughter’s primary school the following year and took over a shuttered south London sauna in 2023. That same year she was the guest designer at Pitti Uomo in Florence, served as Clarks’ first guest creative director in its 200-year history and released a tailored collection with Nike around the Women’s World Cup.
Her clothes reached a bigger audience through musicians. Kendrick Lamar, who has name-checked her in a lyric, wore a custom Martine Rose varsity jacket during his 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, and Drake, Rihanna and Timothée Chalamet have worn her designs.
Back to Balenciaga
This is not her first time at the house. Rose worked on Balenciaga menswear for three years under Demna, who led the brand from 2015 to 2025 and pushed it toward oversized silhouettes, giant “dad” sneakers and deliberately absurd accessories. The Guardian credits her with helping shape that oversized look.
Kering chief executive Luca de Meo said Rose brings “a fresh, fearless and deeply contemporary vision” and a connection to a new generation of customers. Balenciaga president and CEO Gianfranco Gianangeli praised her ability “to challenge conventions, reinvent silhouettes and bring an unexpected perspective to fashion.”
The appointment is part of de Meo’s broader effort to revive Kering, which also owns Gucci, Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta and has been dealing with slowing luxury sales.
What happens to her own label
Her eponymous brand has had a harder time than her reputation suggests. Italian e-commerce company the Level Group holds a majority stake, the business has faced rising production costs since Brexit, and it hasn’t staged a runway show since June 2025, according to The Guardian. Neither Kering nor Rose has said what her move means for the label.
Her first Balenciaga collection has not been scheduled. The house that Cristóbal Balenciaga founded in San Sebastián in 1917 is now in the hands of a designer who once said she liked menswear because “there’s loads of rules” to break.
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