Lifestyle Round-Up
Published:Sunday | October 26, 2025 | 12:11 AMOmar Tomlinson - Contributor
What’s new and exciting in global fashion? Quite a lot, if you’re Jamaican-connected.
Designers, models, and hairstylists with roots in The Rock are elevating the conversation around image-making in the fashion industry with their latest exploits.
From Grace Wales Bonner’s historic appointment as Hermès men’s first black creative director to Jawara Wauchope’s continued success as the hairstylist on speed-dial for Vogue and Victoria’s Secret, we are keeping tabs on who is hot right now.
GRACE’S HERMÈS DREAM
British-Jamaican designer Grace Wales Bonner has manifested the Hermès dream job she told System Magazine in 2019 that she could see herself in.
Bonner, who founded her well-regarded eponymous label 11 years ago after graduating from London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art, was announced as the new men’s creative director for 188-year-old French luxury house, Hermès, last Tuesday.
“It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter, following in the lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers,” Bonner said in an official statement after the news broke of her historic appointment, which makes her the first black woman to lead a major luxury house.
She will assume her new role from Véronique Nichanian, who served as the artistic director of the menswear division for 37 years and was announced to be stepping down two weeks ago.
Wales Bonner, who dressed Formula One racing icon Lewis Hamilton for this year’s Met Gala back in May, has long been hailed for her intellectual and diasporic aesthetic that interrogates black masculinity and identity.
The 35-year-old designer, who has won a wheelbarrow-load of awards, including the 2024 British Menswear Designer of the Year at The Fashion Awards, an appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America International Menswear Designer of the Year in 2021, has also maintained a years-long association with SAINT International Chief Executive Officer Deiwght Peters. He interviewed her during the pandemic in 2022 for his eponymous TVJ talk show, Rolling With Deiwght Peters. Wales Bonner has also recruited scores of SAINT models for a raft of campaign shoots for her own label as well as her collaborative collections with Adidas and runway shows in London, Paris, and Florence.
GUESS WHO’S COMING
Celebrated Jamaican-Canadian designer Kirk Pickersgill is bringing his storied insights to reality television. The creative director and co-founder of the womenswear luxury line Greta Constantine will be a guest judge on the new season of Project Runway Canada, which premieres on November 14 on streaming platform Crave.
Pickersgill joins the line-up of guest judges that includes designer peers Jason Wu and Christian Siriano, make-up artist Mei Pang, and National Football League Fashion Editor Kyle Smith.
Supermodel Coco Rocha is the new host and judge of the upcoming Canadian iteration of the Project Runway franchise, with fashion editor and author Jeanne Beker and Ghanaian-Canadian designer Spencer Badu as her co-judges. Aurora James, the Jamaican-born fashion designer and vice-chair of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, is the show’s mentor for the new season.
Pickersgill’s Greta Constantine line has established itself as a red-carpet fave among A-listers, and was most recently seen worn by Hollywood royalty Julia Roberts at the Los Angeles premiere of her new movie, After The Hunt; British-Jamaican actress Jodie Turner-Smith on her press tour for the action blockbuster Tron: Ares; and Academy Award-winning thespian Kathy Bates at last month’s Emmy Awards.
LUCK OF THE ‘DRU’
There’s no stopping SAINT International’s much-sought-after model Dru Campbell.
Hot on the heels of walking 15 Spring/Summer 2026 designer shows for Fashion Month — Balmain, Dior, Loewe, Michael Kors, Max Mara, and Tory Burch among them — the 18-year-old fashion star just landed two major assignments.
Campbell will appear in the December 2025 issue of American Vogue for the fashion story ‘Chanel by Matthieu Blazy’. The editorial, styled by fashion editor Amanda Harlech, was lensed by Brazilian photog Rafael Pavarotti, following the acclaimed debut collection from Chanel’s new creative director, Blazy, on October 6 during Paris Fashion Week.
The SAINT model also booked another global advertising campaign to complement her previous high-profile campaign turns for Alexander McQueen and Dior. This time around, it is for the just-dropped Miu Miu Automne campaign.
Filmed and photographed by Angela Hill and styled by the in-demand Lotta Volkova, the new collection, according to the Italian luxury house, “reviews past codes and blends a 1990s aesthetic with Miu Miu’s contemporary vision”.
‘HAIR’ AND THERE WITH JAWARA
If it’s a high-fashion gig that involves hairstyling, the odds will most likely favour Jawara Wauchope.
The past two months have seen the Jamaican-American creative in overdrive. His distinctive work is visible in new Fall 2025 advertising campaigns for Marc Jacobs and Ludovic de Saint Sernin; that buzzworthy, supermodel-stacked music video from rapper Doja Cat’s Gorgeous; and a week ago, the 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion show, where he was the lead coiffeur.
Working alongside legendary British-Jamaican make-up maestro Pat McGrath and Victoria’s Secret creative director Adam Selman, Wauchope told Harper’s Bazaar backstage that initial discussions regarding the look-and-feel of the hairstyling “was about bringing back the sexy, big blowout, but we wanted to modernise it. So we are doing a sleek gloss with a little bit of volume.”
On newsstands now, Jawara’s ‘tress-tastic’ touch makes the credits for the November 2025 covers of British Vogue and Vogue Japan, which, respectively, feature actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow and supermodel Lila Moss.