The winner of the 2019 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund is Christopher John Rogers. The designer is heading home with the $400,000 prize at the 16th annual awards event, which was the first to be held under the Tom Ford era at the CFDA.
Rogers joins the ranks of previous winners, including Alexander Wang; Pyer Moss’ Kerby Jean-Raymond; Public School’s Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne; Brock Collection’s Laura Vassar and Kristopher Brock; Paul Andrew; Telfar Clemens, and Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez among them. Now if we could get some Black women in there, we’d be in great company!
This year’s runners-up were Danielle Hirsch for her bridal collection Danielle Frankel, and Reese Cooper for his signature men’s and women’s wear. Hirsch and Cooper will each be awarded $150,000. In order to even make it this far was no easy feat; The selection committee comprised of Altuzarra designer Joseph Altuzarra, Instagram’s Eva Chen, model Paloma Elsesser, Vogue’s Mark Holgate, Jeffrey’s and Nordstrom’s Jeffrey Kalinsky, the CFDA’s Steven Kolb, Vogue’s Chioma Nnadi, Saks Fifth Avenue’s Roopal Patel, Theory’s founder and adviser Andrew Rosen, Diane von Furstenberg and Vogue’s editor in chief and Condé Nast artistic director Anna Wintour. WOW.
In an interview with WWD this fall, Rogers had said of his aesthetic, “It’s basically encouraging people to take up space, to step into their them-ness. Like, whatever makes you you, all the subtle nuances. If you happen to be the ceo of a company, but you still love watching cartoons in the morning and you also eat Lucky Charms, but you also love tennis, like, all of those things maybe don’t go together, but they’re you. So embrace them.”
Is it a Kate from Vampire Diaries? It seem like she needs to open her neck and find a dress without collar.