The recent years for the CFDA revolved around establishing its place in fashion and globally within the evolving Digital Age. As the currency of fashion transitioned from being insularly determined, social media crushed those norms, drawing an even wider critical audience into the fold. Conversely, the rise of social media framed the CFDA’s balance of reaching more youthful audiences while maintaining a solid connection to its longtime supporters. Additionally, with the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin opening the decade, preceding the eventual rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, diversity and inclusion in fashion were more front and center than ever before. Also, events, like the 2016 and 2020 elections, the COVID pandemic, and the rapid rise of climate-altering environments continued to challenge the global landscape, motivated the CFDA to rethink its approach to address the needs of the American fashion industry.

With Diane von Furstenberg and Steven Kolb still leading the CFDA at the beginning of the decade, the organization developed initiatives that continued to stabilize the American fashion industry. The CFDA acquired the Fashion Calendar in 2014, reaffirming itself as the bastion of American fashion. Now, the primary responsibility of New York Fashion Week rests with the organization. This historic moment led to CFDA launching New York Fashion Week Men’s in 2015. When Tom Ford ascended as chairman of the CFDA from 2019 – 2022, he renamed the calendar to the American Collections Calendar in 2021. This change led to the inclusion of American designers who present work internationally yet remain an integral symbol of American fashion taking over the world. The past decade has seen a handful of American designers consistently presenting their collections overseas, such as Rick Owens, Thom Browne, and Virgil Abloh, and running the helms of historic European houses. Essentially, American fashion aesthetics were global, with each fashion center perpetuating, imitating, and interpreting the essence of American style.

Last year was the 25th anniversary of the CFDA Scholarship, featuring new partnerships with Swarovski and Coach for example, to grant a host of young talent between $25,000 – $50,000 each, embarking on their journeys in various university fashion design programs. These 25 years represent the CFDA’s persistence in its mission to foster generations of American designers, breaking down those barriers to entering such a condensed field. Furthermore, in addition to continuing the scholarship program, we see a list of programs and studies enacted to benefit the industry and the communities it serves. These decisions contextualized this next chapter of the CFDA as a vital organization beyond fashion, always remaining conscious of the swift social and cultural changes shaping our contemporary world.

Understanding that fashion starts and ends with business and economics, the CFDA launched the Fashion Manufacturing Initiative in 2013. New York was a center of garment manufacturing with its base along Seventh Avenue before the transition to more oversees manufacturing. The Fashion Manufacturing Initiative, in partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, provided financial support for local fashion manufacturers. By 2019, the initiative had become a $14 million partnership, comprising of new programs that continue to help bolster the development of American fashion manufacturers. There was also the Cadillac Retail Lab in 2016 to promote emerging American designers. For that program, the CFDA partnered with the legendary American car company and invited young designers to develop a retail space while being mentored by various designers connected to the CFDA. In 2017, the CFDA launched with FWD.US, an immigration study addressing the effect of immigration policies on the U.S. fashion industry, job creation, and solutions determining fashion’s future. Following the study was The Glass Runway, a comprehensive review of gender equality in the industry. Building on gender equality, the CFDA partnered with Planned Parenthood as a show of solidarity. In addition to the polarized political theater, especially after the 2016 election presupposing the possibility that many public policies would threaten women’s rights, it was paramount for the CFDA to lend its voice to supporting organizations that promoted equality. During New York Fashion Week in February 2018, participants from the press and models to designers were spotted wearing CFDA-designed pins with the inscription “Fashion stands with Planned Parenthood.” Undoubtedly, the CFDA’s partnership with Planned Parenthood emanated from the long history of activism in fashion that led to the growth of the American fashion industry.

Indeed, in 2020, the COVID pandemic hammered all industries across the spectrum. Under Tom Ford’s direction, the CFDA launched A Common Thread. This campaign in partnership with VOGUE raised over $5 million to provide relief to as many American fashion designers, independent retailers, and factories as possible. Now that the peak of the pandemic has passed, many fashion businesses connected to the CFDA continue to operate on four cylinders through the support of the CFDA, advancing the legacy of American fashion. Keeping in mind the importance of the digital space, especially during the pandemic which hampered the fashion industry’s ability to physically reach its audiences, the CFDA inaugurated  RUNWAY360 in 2020. RUNWAY360 is a digital platform that integrates aspects of a fashion designers’ businesses from press and sales to database of collections that can be viewed by the public. Essentially, many other fashion organizations and companies with adjacent digital platforms only promote designer collection presentations, but RUNWAY360 is a digital experience that solely thinks about connecting the designer and fashion companies directly to economic development by focusing the platform on consumer activities.

Thinking about the definition of American fashion, historically, the world’s focus has always been on New York as a competing fashion market, but American fashion stretches the length of the country. In 2021, the CFDA started the CFDA Connects initiative, established to recognize, promote, and provide business development support to the markets inducted in the Regional Fashion Organization Network, which includes their fashions weeks and designers. Through this initiative, fashion organizations in less nationally known, yet growing, markets like Ohio, Hawaii, Indiana, Florida, and Georgia, partner with the CFDA to expand their presence and bring the public’s awareness that fashion is everywhere, not just New York. More broadly, the CFDA also began the Interim CFDA Membership program in 2022, allowing participants who demonstrate great promise and have been in business for five years or less a 1-3 membership term. There is a hope that after the term, it would lead to those designers obtaining full membership. With so many new American fashion design talent sprouting every year, this opportunity offers one of many solutions to the dialogue society is having around giving new voices a “seat at the table,” and a chance to participate in creating the change everyone wants to see in fashion.

Always making history internally as it is externally, the CFDA appointed CaSandra Diggs as the first Black president of the organization in late 2020 to work alongside Kolb and Ford, affirming its desire to always have a plethora of culturally different voices to contribute to the future of American fashion. Also, 2021 saw the launch of CFDA IMPACT, which was created to nurture and help find opportunities for Black and Brown talent throughout the fashion industry. With the constant rise in injustices in Black and Brown communities, this program represents the unconditional willingness of the CFDA to listen to the outcries of minority communities and provide routes for their long-term success in fashion.

In addition to the CFDA’s social and political waves, its presence in the mainstream media through crowning cultural innovators aligned with the public’s perceptions has become a very apparent, successfully maintaining a symbiotic relationship with these growing, digital news-seeking inclined audiences. The CFDA Fashion Awards, for one, is a prime example of this success. The CFDA Fashion Awards is the premier American fashion awards ceremony, awarding fashion designers and creatives since 1981. As previously alluded, 2020 was a year of reckoning. Alongside the pandemic, the uptick in minority-related hate crimes and political and societal injustice caused audiences to turn their attention to institutions across the spectrum, demanding industries to examine their involvement in the oppression of BIPOC communities. Moreover, looking at the largest promotional outlet in the CFDA calendar next to New York Fashion Week and the American fashion presentations, the Awards ceremony has attained a level of aspirational cache many fashion creatives seek to continue to catapult their brands. Since 2020, we have seen a wave of young avant-garde designers like Gabriela Hearst, Kerby Jean-Raymond, Elena Velez, Telfar Clemens, Christopher John Rogers, Edvin Thompson, Raul Lopez and international designers like Grace Wales Bonner take home awards. Expanding the awards to include new categories in recent years, like the inaugural Stylist Award given in 2022 to Hollywood image architect Law Roach, highlights the expansion of inclusivity of lauding voices who shift the culture, not just in design. There’s also the honoring of Dapper Dan in 2021, in which the CFDA gave him the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. That was a significant moment contextualized in this era when audiences are desiring a more diverse coalition of people to be recognized for their undeniable contributions. Because of the ingenuity of designers like Dapper Dan, we have the contemporary category of streetwear fashion, making the Lifetime Achievement Award very befitting to give him. Before being appointed as the CFDA first non-designer board member in 2019, it is crucial to note the awarding of legendary model and activist Bethann Hardison the 2014 Founder’s Award for her history of activism. Activism, particularly regarding racial equitability, is embedded in CFDA’s legacy going back to Eleanor Lambert, who led the charge in organizing the Battle of Versailles in 1973. Many remember Hardison was a participating model for the American design presentations for the 1973 event. Its legacy is a result of the diversity that Lambert pushed to symbolize the essence of American fashion, having Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows, Anne Klein, Bill Blass, and Halston show their collections on an array of models which included a host of Black supermodels. It was a night that set the tone of what American fashion was to become.

Alongside awarding designers, entrepreneurs, and creatives, the selection of the coveted Fashion Icon award also formed the basis of this chapter of the CFDA. From Rihanna in 2014, Pharrell in 2015, Beyoncé in 2016 to Zendaya in 2021 and Lenny Kravitz in 2022, these figures represent the CFDA’s finger on the pulse of culture and recognizing how these individuals bridge a gap between fashion and the masses. For many generations of fashion, dating back to the Renaissance, the heralding quality of a fashion icon has been a balance of influencing style in daily life and shifting the fashion industry in some positive way. During the 20th century, especially with the rise of pop culture celebrities throughout this period, the bar of a fashion icon shifted to a less strict standard than in previous centuries. The recognition of these figures as fashion icons during this past decade through the CFDA Awards confirms the organization’s ability to remain true to traditions that ground the fashion system while signaling the evolution in who the public idealizes as influencers of society’s highest taste.

In the fall of 2022, Thom Browne was named the next Chairman of the CFDA after the three-year tenure led by Tom Ford. Browne quickly rose to prominence after having his designs worn by First Lady Michelle Obama in 2013 but continues to push the bounds of avant-garde design through his gender bending silhouettes in ways that challenge the fallacy that American fashion isn’t artistic compared to its European and Asian counterparts.

As 2022 came to a close, the CFDA launched the first metaverse digital fashion exhibition, Fashioning the Shades of American Design, celebrating the CFDA’s 60^th anniversary. The digital exhibition, curated by yours truly, Darnell-Jamal Lisby, examines 60 designers from various cultural and lived experiences as vehicles for pushing American fashion into the future. The exhibition explored designers from Oscar de la Renta, Rick Owens, Patrick Kelly, and Tracy Reese to Christopher John Rogers, Yeohlee Teng, Tommy Hilfiger, and many more who represent a coalition of American ingenuity. Even though there are so many more than the designers showcased in the exhibition, the platform was another way the CFDA remains on the pulse of accessibility and equity regarding fashion appreciation, creativity, and industry.

As the CFDA turns the page to a new decade, the mission of settling and thriving in the Digital Age remains in addition to celebrating and supporting the diverse voices that make up the American fashion industry. Despite the ups and downs of the world, the CFDA remains consistent in its vision and symbol of hope for so many, nationally and internationally.

Darnell-Jamal Lisby is a fashion historian and Assistant Curator of Fashion of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Lisby also curated CFDA’s “Fashioning the Shades of American Design” metaverse exhibition on The Sandbox. Enter and play here through January 19, 2023!