We Speak Fashion

Martine Rose Takes the Creative Director Chair at Balenciaga

Published

1 hour ago

November 8, 2026

A model wearing a black Balenciaga puffer jacket and earmuffs against a pale sky

A model wears a black puffer jacket in Balenciaga's Skiwear Collection. Photo via @balenciaga.

Balenciaga has a new creative director. Kering confirmed on Friday, November 6, that London designer Martine Rose will lead the house, overseeing all men’s and women’s collections. She starts on November 16 and will be based in Paris, becoming the first woman to hold the creative director role in the house’s nearly 110 year history.

The appointment landed one day after the house confirmed that Pierpaolo Piccioli would step down. Piccioli, who arrived at Balenciaga from Valentino, leaves after a brief tenure of sixteen months, and Rose’s hiring closes weeks of industry speculation about who would take one of the most closely watched jobs in fashion.

Rose is known for a subculture inflected design language rooted in her London upbringing, built through her own label, which has grown from a cult menswear name into one of British fashion’s most respected independent brands. Her connection to Balenciaga is not new: earlier in her career she worked alongside former creative director Demna on the launch of his first menswear collection for the house.

In a statement, the designer said: “It is a true privilege to be appointed creative director of Balenciaga, a house with an extraordinary heritage and a boldly creative spirit.”

Rose has not staged a runway show since her own label’s spring and summer 2026 presentation in June, which leaves her first collection for Balenciaga as the appointment’s open question. No debut date has been announced, though her first collection is expected next season, when she will set out her vision for a house that has moved through three distinct creative eras in a decade. For Kering, the hire signals a reset built on a designer whose reputation rests on clothing culture as much as on image.

Kaia Gerber Stars Alongside Dev Hynes in the JW Anderson and UGG Campaign

Published

51 minutes ago

November 8, 2026

We Speak Media

Kaia Gerber standing in a white sleeveless two-piece outfit against a plain backdrop in a studio photo.

Kaia Gerber in a white two-piece outfit in a studio photo. Photo via @kaiagerber.

Kaia Gerber is the face of the new JW Anderson and UGG collaboration, starring in the campaign for the collection alongside musician Dev Hynes. The British fashion house unveiled the imagery this week, and the collection is on sale now in stores and through the JW Anderson webstore.

Photographers Tanya and Zhenya Posternak shot the campaign as a series of intimate domestic vignettes. Gerber and Hynes are pictured across everyday home settings, in visuals built around the boundary between everyday ease and considered dressing, the same meeting point the collection itself is designed to occupy. The imagery explores domestic rituals and everyday dressing, and it reads less like a conventional product advertisement than a study of how the clothes sit inside a real home. The casting pairs one of fashion’s most in demand models with a musician known for crossing between music, art and fashion projects, a combination the house describes through the work itself: two creative figures photographed the way they might actually live in the clothes.

Gerber’s presence gives the collaboration its headline. A runway and campaign regular for the biggest houses in the business, she has become one of the defining models of her generation, and her name on the campaign places the UGG collaboration firmly in luxury fashion territory rather than the footwear aisle alone.

The collection brings JW Anderson’s design language to UGG’s footwear and comfort led staples, translating both brands into a single wardrobe of pieces made to be lived in. The campaign’s domestic setting is the concept made visible: considered design photographed in the middle of ordinary daily rituals, rather than on a runway or in a studio.

The JW Anderson and UGG collection is available now, both in physical stores and online. For Gerber, the campaign is the latest in a steady line of top tier bookings, and for both brands it is a collaboration pitched at the overlap of comfort dressing and high fashion.