NEW YORK -- The Council of Fashion Designers of America gave its top fashion awards on Monday to Gabriela Hearst for womenswear and Kerby Jean-Raymond for menswear. The two designers led a group of winners that the CFDA said was the most diverse in the 39-year history of the awards.
It was the second honour in two days for Jean-Raymond, the prominent Black founder of the Pyer Moss label, who was also named Designer of the Year by Harlem's Fashion Row in a virtual ceremony on Sunday.
The winners also included Telfar Clemens, who won the accessories award, and Christopher John Rogers, who won for American emerging designer. All four were first-time winners.
There were no acceptance speeches in a video announcement that lasted less than 10 minutes, but Hearst issued a statement in which she sent “a kiss” to her country of origin, Uruguay, and saluted her fellow nominees as well as designers everywhere, many of whom are struggling to stay afloat amidst the coronavirus pandemic. “We are all in this together,” Hearst said.
The designer is known for sleek power-dressing, like a teal pantsuit modeled by then-incoming U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018 in Interview magazine. The jacket was dubbed the Angela, for Black activist Angela Davis.
The Brooklyn-based Jean-Raymond, who began working in fashion as a teenager, founded Pyer Moss in 2013. He has placed the African American experience at the centre of his craft, and gained sudden fame with a 2015 fashion show that opened with a long video about police brutality against Black people.
He recently said that racism had become more overt since the 2016 election. “We're unearthing things now. We're realizing that we had outward racists among us in the fashion industry,” he told the Washington Post in June. “You're seeing images now, you're seeing blackface parties … the type of stuff we were enduring as young designers, a lot of that stuff was covert.”
The award for international women's designer went to Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino. The international men's designer award went to Kim Jones for Dior.
The awards were announced by designer Tom Ford, chairman of the CFDA and also a current nominee, in a brief video announcement on Runway360, the organization's new digital platform. They were originally scheduled to be presented, as usual, at a glitzy ceremony in June, but the ceremony was cancelled due to the pandemic.
