CFDA and the Bezos Earth Fund are pleased to announce the 12 emerging student designers selected as the inaugural CFDA x Bezos Earth Fund The Next Thread Initiative (TNTI) Scholarship recipients. The selected scholars were awarded more than $500,000 in total to support tuition and thesis materials for the 2026–2027 academic year.
The TNTI Scholarship, created to advance education and innovation in sustainable fashion, is the CFDA’s largest scholarship and only scholarship dedicated to sustainability in fashion design. Fashion design students from across the country submitted applications. The applicants’ work shows a generation of designers engaging deeply with questions of material, waste, craft, and fashion’s environmental impact. Finalists had the opportunity to present their work to the scholarship selection committee.
This committee included Bezos Earth Fund Vice Chair Lauren Sánchez Bezos, CFDA President and CEO Steven Kolb, and designers Joseph Altuzarra, Stacey Bendet, Tommy Hilfiger, Grace Ling, Sami Miró, and Tracy Reese. The committee considered each finalist’s creative vision, design point of view, and response to environmental challenges.
The 2026 scholarship recipients include five rising seniors and seven master’s students across eight schools. This year’s award includes the highest number of graduate-level recipients of any CFDA scholarship class to date. Awards were determined individually to help close each recipient’s remaining gap in tuition and fees for the 2026–2027 academic year. Every recipient also received a separate stipend to support their graduate and senior thesis collections and offset the cost of working with sustainable materials and processes.
The committee also named three Scholars with Distinction – the top-scoring finalists Zion Burrell (FIT), Hera Ford (Parsons), and Grace Wang (NYU).
The Scholarship Award application asked students to address some of fashion’s most significant climate and nature impacts while treating sustainability as the creative challenge of their generation. The resulting work is thoughtful, experimental, and deeply individual, reflecting each scholar’s imagination, rigor, and curiosity.
Some scholars began with material itself: tending silkworms, growing and dyeing with indigo, developing bioplastics from gelatin, agar, and seaweed, or turning invasive species into fibers, dyes, and filament. Others reconsidered what already exists, from deadstock and reclaimed denim to discarded quilts, while rust, rainwater, weathering, zero-waste patternmaking, and digital prototyping opened up new ways to think about color, construction, and the life of a garment.
The work also showed how closely material choices and design decisions were tied to each student’s perspective on sustainability and the role fashion can play to further it. Heritage, place, family, and community surfaced throughout the projects, shaping everything from material and construction to silhouette and craft.
There is no single idea of what sustainable fashion should look like here. The 12 scholars offered distinct perspectives, and a glimpse of how the next generation is already expanding what sustainable fashion can be through curiosity, creativity, and technical skill.
The CFDA x Bezos Earth Fund The Next Thread Initiative is a $6.25 million initiative supported by a Bezos Earth Fund grant to the CFDA Foundation to advance innovation and education in sustainable fashion. TNTI will provide $1.5 million in student scholarships over three years (2026–2028) and $3 million in awards to independent American designers and brands focused on sustainability in design, material choice, construction, and process.
