Following a long journey that kicked off in June, the winner of the 2025 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund was revealed to be Ashlynn Park of Ashlyn, who exactly a week ago took home the Emerging Designer of the Year honor at the CFDA Fashion Awards. The news was announced by model Alex Consani tonight at an intimate dinner hosted by Isha Ambani and Zac Posen together with Vogue’s Anna Wintour and Chloe Malle. Park will receive $300,000 in addition to a mentorship with an industry expert to help expand her label, which she founded in 2020. This was her second time applying for the Fund, yet her win came at the right time. “This brand was discovered quite in the early stage,” she told Vogue this year. “I was super lucky because I was doubting myself: I’m not too young, I’m not an emerging designer, and my background is pattern-making.”
The runners-up are Stephanie Suberville of Heirlome, a New York-based designer who started her career at Rag Bone with Marcus Wainwright and David Neville after graduating from Parsons in 2008, and California native-turned-Brooklynite Julian Louie of menswear label Aubero, who kicked off his fashion journey “in another lifetime,” as he put it, back with 2009 an eponymous womenswear brand. They will both receive $100,000 grants to fund their respective projects.
“We just saw Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the winners of our very first CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund back in 2004, triumph with their Loewe debut in Paris,” said Wintour, “There are such world class talents working in America, and I am just as excited and optimistic about how far this year’s finalists will go. Steven Kolb, the CEO of the CFDA, added: “The CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund is about giving emerging designers the support they need to build lasting businesses. This year’s winners reflect the purpose of the fund—to ensure American fashion continues to grow, evolve, and lead with creativity.”
What the Fund has always done well is reflect the breadth of talent in American fashion. It’s what this singular lineup of winners epitomizes, too. Park was born in South Korea, and Suberville in Mexico, while Louie is a third generation American whose paternal grandparents emigrated from China to the US. And while their identities are integral to their work, they inspire it rather than confine it. Park is known for her terrific cutting and the sophisticated sense of ease in her clothes. Suberville, who founded Heirlome with her husband Jeffrey Axford, has made it her mission to leverage her label to uplift the voices of Latin American artisans; and Louie, whose most pressing preoccupation is craft, traces his keenness for materiality to his grandparents, who operated a laundry in Long Island. “It’s this inheritance of care for clothing and building a life around the caring and mending of it,” he said earlier this year.
Above all, what these three designers share is experience. Their labels have all been operating for under five years, but each of them worked in the industry for over a decade prior to their respective launches. Park notably started her career as a pattern maker for Yohji Yamamoto, moving on to work for 2008 Fund winner Alexander Wang after relocating to New York in 2011, and subsequently put in time at Raf Simons’s Calvin Klein. Suberville continued her career at Elizabeth James by Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen after Rag Bone, and she now runs Heirlome in addition to working as creative director for a different brand. Louie worked extensively as a consultant and designer for other labels, including Amiri, before founding Aubero.
“Congratulations to this year’s winners and to all the finalists—their creativity and commitment are truly remarkable,” said Ambani. “I am deeply inspired by this new generation of designers and excited to continue opening dialogue between creative voices, where shared ideas and craftsmanship can lead to meaningful creative collaboration and innovation.”
This year’s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund class also included Bach Mai, Bernard James, Don’t Let Disco by Ashley Moubayed, Gabe Gordon and Timothy Gibbons from Gabe Gordon, Jamie Okuma, Meruert Tolegen, and Peter Do. Alongside Wintour and Kolb, the selection committee included CFDA chairman Thom Browne; Instagram’s head of fashion Eva Chen; founder of the Fifteen Percent Pledge and Brother Vellies Aurora James; model Paloma Elsesser; Nordstrom vice president and fashion director Rickie De Sole; Roopal Patel, SVP of fashion at Saks; Zac Posen, executive vice president and creative director of Gap Inc. and chief creative officer of Old Navy; and Vogue’s Mark Holgate and Nicole Phelps.
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