Blue Hill prides itself on locally sourced, seasonal ingredients that treat New York palates to some of the city’s highest quality foods. In other words, everything that’s good for you. To that end, the Greenwich Village eatery proved to be the perfect venue for Wednesday’s unveiling of the 3.0 finalists of the CFDA + Lexus Fashion* Initiative, a program focused on transformative leadership, sustainable innovation and positive change.
The finalists are Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow of Public School, Araks Yeramyan of Araks, Tracy Reese, Jonathan Cohen, and Abdul Abasi and Greg Rosborough of Abasi Rosborough.
Rachel Espersen of Lexus called this group “the most diverse set yet, especially with the directions their brands take, with streetwear, menswear, womenswear, and swimwear.”
The new finalists raised a toast to each other, and they were toasted by friends and past participants of the program, including Maria Cornejo, Wing Yau, and Whitney Pozgay.
Sustainability is a core pillar of the CFDA. “Since we started working with Lexus many years ago, we evolved this to be a very focused, mentored business development program” CFDA’s Steven Kolb said, adding that early on, “It was really hard to get designers to be interested. The idea of sustainability in fashion seemed foreign or expensive and not something consumers were interested in. Now, we have a lot of brands that see this as a core tenet of their work.”
Lexus, he added, shared CFDA’s commitment and responsibility to sustainable fashion. The designers who already went through the program had words of wisdom for the new crop.
“There was a lot of information that came to us that I didn’t know,” said Abrima Erwiah of Studio 189, who, with her design partner Rosario Dawson, won C+LF*I 2.0. “We would spend a lot of time thinking about how garments were made and not wondering what type of label was being used on the inside, or what kind of ink was being used for a T-Shirt. The program gave us this opportunity to understand and learn more about what sustainability really looks like from every single point of view.”
Dawson added, “Ask a lot of questions and take in as much information as you possibly can to apply to your vision. Fashion is the second largest polluter in the world. How can you be creating something that will help that issue while also educating people? People want to know that what they’re wearing is not contributing to a problem.”
Ultimately, the program will help these designers belong to a group that contributes to positive change in fashion.
As Erwiah put it, “We feel like we joined a family. This is the most wonderful network with a lot of resources and that won’t end with the program. We have grown a lot with the program. Learn, and take it all in!”
