Balenciaga Creative Director Martine Rose Starts November 16 as First Woman to Lead the House in 109 Years

Balenciaga has named London designer Martine Rose as its new creative director, ending weeks of rumor and giving the house its first woman in the top creative job in 109 years. She starts on November 16, one day short of two weeks after the departure of Pierpaolo Piccioli was announced. Piccioli’s exit came just a day before Rose’s confirmation, and the speed of the handover suggests the house had a successor lined up well in advance.

A homecoming, not a debut

Rose’s return to Balenciaga is not her first time inside the building. When Demna took over the label in 2015, he hired her as a menswear consultant. She stayed until 2018 and, by several accounts, helped shape the oversized tailoring, boxy cuts, and exaggerated proportions that defined the brand’s early streetwear-inflected identity. Vogue’s Sarah Mower, who observed the pair at work, describes Demna as a long-distance admirer who found Rose’s early presentations online. This time Rose is running the whole operation rather than advising on one part of it.

It is also the first time she has led a major fashion house. That is striking given her influence. Rose launched her own label in 2007, after a short-lived T-shirt line called LMNOP in 2002, and built it through London’s Fashion East incubator. Since then she has worked with Nike, Clarks, Supreme, Stüssy, and Tommy Hilfiger, and her clothes have been worn by Kendrick Lamar, Timothée Chalamet, and Rihanna.

Why the choice resonates

Coverage of the announcement is unusually warm. Harper’s Bazaar calls it a welcome break from the same few names that tend to circulate for big creative director jobs. Vogue says the wait for a designer of Rose’s standing to be given a luxury platform has gone on “far, far too long.” Her work is rooted in what she has called an “observational” approach: watching how people really dress, then stretching, shrinking, or twisting garments until the familiar looks new. Her references include rave, football casuals, reggae, queer culture, and the Jamaican-British household she grew up in.

Her fans argue that some of her once-odd silhouettes later became ordinary. Rose herself has recalled that people reacted badly to her oversized shapes in 2013, only for those proportions to spread across menswear.

Both Harper’s and Vogue also place the news in a wider context. Most big luxury houses are led by white men, and Rose’s appointment, like the excitement around Grace Wales Bonner at Hermès, is read as recognition for women of color whose work has shaped fashion without always earning credit.

The job ahead

Rose inherits a house still searching for its footing. Cristóbal Balenciaga founded it in 1917 in San Sebastián and was celebrated for sculptural volume and silhouette. Demna left in 2025 for Gucci. Piccioli arrived that year with a brief to honor the house’s sculptural elegance without losing the streetwear fans Demna had cultivated. His tenure is reported as either 16 months or three seasons, depending on the outlet, but all agree it was short.

The obvious question is whether a designer known mainly for menswear can handle womenswear and accessories, which are central to a house of this size. Mower points to Rose’s long-standing interest in gender play, and in “a woman in men’s clothes, a man in women’s clothes,” as a sign she can. Nothing in the coverage settles it, and the house has not said when her first collection will appear.

In a statement, Rose called the role “a true privilege” and promised to honor the house’s legacy while creating “the next chapter.” Kering CEO Luca de Meo said she brings a “fresh, fearless and deeply contemporary vision” and a connection to a new generation. For a brand that has wobbled between its couture roots and its street-style fame, the bet is that its next Balenciaga creative director understands both.

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