Last night, the winner of the annual CFDA/Vogue fashion fund prize was announced — a prize celebrating the best and brightest of New York’s young designers.
This year, i-D faves Chromat, Vaquera, Sandy Liang and Telfar Clemons all got nominated, but the deserving winner was Telfar. The avant-garde designer has been gathering steam since he launched his label ten years ago, with his unconventional take on conventional things — from transforming a museum into a mall to send models and mannequins down for his autumn/winter 14 menswear show, to chopping up and recontextualising the traditional shirt and tee for spring/summer 17, to designing new uniforms for iconic NYC burger joint White Castle to celebrate its 95th Anniversary.
Telfar will receive a whopping $400,000 USD to help fund and propel the label, as well as mentoring from CFDA members and Vogue editors (which the other 9 finalists will also receive). The runners up were eyewear line Ahlem, and swim and athletic wear label Chromat, who will each receive $150,000 USD. Not bad at all.