The 2024 Council of Fashion Designers of America awards, otherwise known as the Oscars of American fashion, were held in the Museum of Natural History, in the atrium under the great blue whale, but the coming election was the elephant in the room. How could it not be?
It’s easy for awards shows to get insular and self-congratulatory, and fashion can seem very much like its own echo chamber, but the industry is increasingly wearing its politics on its well-dressed sleeves. The last New York Fashion Week began with a get-out-the-vote march attended by many of the people in the room on Monday, including the positive change award winner Michael Kors, who managed to get the presenter Blake Lively out of floral prints and into a very chic sequined white gown and tuxedo (of his own design, natch).
As if in acknowledgment, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, in a black lace dress, opened the evening with a plea to “please tap into your drive, tap into your inspiration, tap into your ability to bring other people along.”
Thom Browne, the chairman of the CFDA, seconded the idea, reminding the crowd that “fashion, like democracy, is about choices and individual decisions that have the power to create culture and communities and define the future we want, we need and we deserve.”
In a way, that’s what these awards do: define the future of the industry, or its power structure. And by that measure, there is no question that, as may be true in the election itself, a generational shift is occurring. One that elevates the melting pot of America and the allure of diverse points of view, putting them right at the beating center of how we dress.
So while the nominees for the three big awards of the evening included familiar names from past CFDA ceremonies — Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler, Tory Burch, Thom Browne — the actual winners represented a change in the system.
Raul Lopez of Luar, a Dominican American who talks openly about sneaking into the library at the Fashion Institute of Technology to learn his craft, took home the accessories designer of the year award for the second time. Willy Chavarria, whose most recent show, “América,” paid homage to itinerant laborers and service workers (and included merch made for the A.C.L.U.), was named men’s wear designer of the year, also for the second time.
And Rachel Scott of Diotima, a Jamaican American who began her line, which melds the crafts and traditions of the Caribbean with a haute urban sensibility, only three years ago, won women’s wear designer of the year, after winning the emerging designer of the year award in 2023. (This year, Henry Zankov of Zankov won that one.)
All three designers make clothes that grapple with the current evolution in culture, and that reshape what “American style” means, in the most exciting way. All three are independent, at a time when forging an independent fashion business is increasingly hard. All talked about communities — the ones they came from and the one they found in fashion.
The shift was capped off by the renaming of the CFDA board of director’s tribute award in honor of Isabel Toledo, the resolutely independent Cuban American designer who died in 2019 and who became famous for creating Michelle Obama’s 2009 inauguration outfit.
There were moments of levity at the ceremony. Cynthia Erivo, as the host of the evening, swapped her thematic “Wicked” green gowns for a corseted black Gap fishtail number with a hood made from … well, hoodie material, but kept her famously long nails emerald colored. Then she challenged Marc Jacobs, there to present the editor Hamish Bowles with the founder’s award, to a “nail off.”
André 3000 arrived onstage toting a traffic cone, the better to present Erykah Badu, resplendent in Thom Browne and looking like a high fashion priestess, with the style icon award — an honor she had been trying to win, she said after removing her mouth-shielding nose ring, “since I was 6.” Donna Karan arrived with Todd Oldham to give Stephen Burrows a lifetime achievement award and then went off script to note that Mr. Burrows shared a first name with her late husband, so who knows what could happen? (Answer: He made a very short speech.)
And there were stars: a newly blond Angel Reese in strapless Simkhai, Da’vine Joy Randolph in corseted bronze Wiederhoeft, Katie Holmes in pink and red Carolina Herrera, Yseult (who also performed) in witchy Rick Owens, Charles Melton in Coach.
But in the end, the larger context was the ubiquitous trend of the evening. The belief, as Mr. Lopez said on receiving his award, that even more than making beauty, it was possible to “make the change.”
That, as Mr. Chavarria said, while “many people in this room are very concerned about their roots and very concerned about our existence as a people, as women, as immigrants of color, as queer people, trans people, we need to talk to the people who may not be concerned about their own rights. People that don’t have as much on the line.”
“It’s not just for us to worry about, it’s for everyone to worry about,” he continued. “And not just in fashion, which is what we’re all here for, but our lives and our communities and our country.”
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