And just like that, we’re back.

If you can believe it, a year has come and gone since the 2025 CFDA Awards—and, whoo boy, what a year it’s been. Still, the CFDA Awards are a time for the American fashion industry to take a moment and celebrate its best and brightest—from longtime stalwarts to the buzzy new upstarts—and honor those who have been keeping the creative spark alive year in and out.

This year, the ceremony was hosted for the fourth year at New York’s Natural History Museum, with cocktails in front of the iconic dioramas in the Hall of North American Mammals followed by dinner and the awards show at the Hall of Ocean Life, where guests dined on pot pies (a now enduring tradition) underneath a 94-foot-long model of a female blue whale. The evening was hosted by the endlessly charming multihyphenate Keke Palmer, with presenters including Matt Damon, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Osaka, and Cole Escola, among others. The ceremony covers two categories: First, the awards, in which a winner is chosen from a shortlist of nominees crowdsourced by members of the CFDA and the honorees, longtime industry stalwarts who are saluted for their tireless lifetime of work in the fashion industry.

This year’s honorees are a varied and buzzy cohort: Anthony Vaccarello was named International Designer of the Year for his decade of work at Saint Laurent; Gap Inc. will receive the Innovation Award presented by Amazon Fashion and presented by Demi Moore; Tory Burch will receive the Positive Change Award; photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have been selected as this year’s Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award recipients; Linda Fargo will take home the Founder’s Award in honor of Eleanor Lambert; Eva Chen will accept the Media Award in honor of Eugenia Sheppard; the Isabel Toledo Board of Directors’ Tribute will be presented to Susan Cianciolo; and the Fashion Icon Award will be presented to architect Peter Marino.

Below is a list of this year’s nominees, which will be updated in real time throughout the night, so keep checking back.

American Menswear Designer of the Year

WINNER: Ralph Lauren

Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne for Public School New York
Thom Browne
Todd Snyder
Willy Chavarria

Google American Emerging Designer of the Year

Colleen Allen
Emily Dawn Long
Julia Ferentinos for Juju Vera
Julian Louie for Aubero
Zane Li for Lii