CFDA Fashion Awards 2020 Winners Include Telfar & More

Photo: David Crotty/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images.

On Monday, during the first-ever digital NYFW, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) announced the winners of the 2020 Fashion Awards. And despite some worry that this year’s winners would look all too similar to those in years past — The Row, Marc Jacobs, and Tom Ford, who have all won multiple times, were nominated again this year — the announcement didn’t disappoint, with three Black designers taking home the ultimate prize in their respective categories: Christopher John Rogers, Telfar Clemens, and Pyer Moss' Kerby Jean-Raymond.

After announcing that Kim Jones, Dior’s creative director of menswear and the new artistic director of Fendi womenswear, had won International Menswear Designer of the Year and Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino had won the same category for womenswear, Tom Ford, the Chairman of the CFDA, revealed the winner for the new American Emerging Designer of the Year award: Christopher John Rogers. The category made waves back in July for including a fresh list of designers among an otherwise-been-there-done-that roster. In addition to Christopher John Rogers, who was also the winner of the 2019 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award, it included Kenneth Nicholson, Peter Do, and Reese Cooper.

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“I'm incredibly humbled and honoured to receive the CFDA Emerging Designer of the Year Award for 2020. Thank you very much to Chairman @tomford and all of the hardworking folks at the @CFDA for your tremendous encouragement and continued support. Thank ya'll for getting it,” Rogers wrote on Instagram following his win. The designer, whose fall ‘20 NYFW show was the talk of fashion month, was recently worn by Lady Gaga at the 2020 MTV VMAs. His designs were also featured in a number of September issues, including Zendaya’s InStyle editorial, Tessa Thompson’s Porter cover, and Hunter Schafer’s shoot for Allure.

Next up was the award for American Accessories Designer of the Year, which regularly sees Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s luxury brand The Row crowned victor. After losing the category to the two last year, Telfar Clemens, the designer behind the “Bushwick Birkin” Shopping Bag, was selected as the winner. This win for Telfar is well-deserved, given the year that Clemens and his brand have had thus far, which includes multiple record sell-outs of the bag and AOC’s seal of approval, among other high points.

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CFDA American Menswear Designer of the Year 2020. My pops still won’t understand. ❤️

A post shared by Kerby Jean-Raymond (@kerbito) on Sep 14, 2020 at 10:55am PDT

Another former CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award winner won an award in the American Menswear Designer of the Year category on Monday. Jean-Raymond, the founder and creative director of Pyer Moss, beat out a competitive list of nominees that included Emily Bode for Bode, Thom Browne, Todd Snyder, and Tom Ford. And this wasn’t even his first award this week. On Sunday, Jean-Raymond was honoured at Harlem’s Fashion Row Style Awards and Fashion Show with the Designer of the Year Award. “We’ve done some incredible shit,” he wrote on Instagram, after calling out members of his team. “More still, god willing.”

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According to a press release, each of the winners in the four American categories — Christopher John Rogers, Telfar Clemens, Kerby Jean-Raymond, and Gabriela Hearst, who won the American Womenswear Designer of the Year Award — are taking home their first-ever CFDA Fashion Awards today. (Hearst is the first female designer to win the womenswear prize since 2015, as well as the only female winner in 2020.) As it stands, this is the most diverse group of recipients in the awards’ 39-year-history.

See all the nominations and winners below.