New Style Idea

This year has been all about the “Bushwick Birkin” — and the It bag just made Teflar Clemens a CFDA winner.

The Brooklyn-based designer won the CFDA’s 2020 Accessories Designer of the Year award, an honor that in recent years has gone to names like Coach’s Stuart Vevers, Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough and Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen of The Row.

The designer’s Telfar bag has been such a hit over the past few months that a summer drop even crashed his site. But the designer has more than just a hit handbag going for him:  After a collaboration with Converse last year, Telfar launched his own footwear line at Pitti Uomo in January, with a loafer style and Western-style boots forthcoming this fall.

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Extra, Extra! The 2020 #CFDAAwards winner for Accessories Designer of the Year is Telfar Clemens for @telfarglobal. Congratulations! #tomford #telfar #telfarclemens #cfdaxklarna

A post shared by cfda (@cfda) on Sep 14, 2020 at 9:05am PDT

Announced Monday at noon via a virtual featuring CFDA chairman Tom Ford as presenter, the awards took mere minutes before they were over. No virtual red carpet, no designer intros or acceptance speeches; just Ford reading the nominees and winners and a slightly robotic, removed voiceover. Designers took to their Instagram pages to deliver makeshift acceptance speeches; Telfar posted a video (original date unknown) of shoppers dancing while wearing multiple versions of his handbag.

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#cfdaawards vid: @raydrizzyjay

A post shared by @ telfarglobal on Sep 14, 2020 at 9:24am PDT

Still, the awards had a lot to say. After years of complaints that the same designers were winning the same awards, this year’s winners mark a noticeable shift in diversity, a seeming do-right that fits with the CFDA’s recent equality initiatives both inside the organization and throughout the American fashion industry.

Of the six awards given this year, three of them were given to designers of color: Clemens for Accessories, Christopher John Rogers for American Emerging Designer of the Year and Kerby Jean-Raymond for American Menswear Designer of the Year. Only one woman was given an award, Gabriela Hearst for American Womenswear Designer of the Year.

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TALK ABOUT DREAMS COMING TRUE- Full of Gratitude “Thank you so much Chairman @tomford and the CFDA for this incredible encouragement for the team and I. I want to thank my fellow nominees @BrandonMaxwell, Tom Ford, @TheRow, and @themarcjacobs . I share this with my team, because vision without execution is hallucination. I also want to share it with my friends and family, we all know how much they sacrifice for us. But especially all other designers and creatives that are going through these times, we are all in this together. “La union hace la fuerza”(strength in unity) and that’s a kiss for my mother country, Uruguay.” #gabrielahearst

A post shared by Gabriela Hearst (@gabrielahearst) on Sep 14, 2020 at 9:49am PDT

Below is the full list of 2020 CFDA Fashion Awards winners:

American Womenswear Designer of the Year: Gabriela Hearst
American Menswear Designer of the Year: Kerby Jean-Raymond for Pyer Moss
American Accessories Designer of the Year: Telfar Clemens for Telfar
American Emerging Designer of the Year: Christopher John Rogers
International Women’s Designer of the Year: Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino
International Men’s Designer of the Year: Kim Jones for Dior