The annual Fashion Group International Night of Stars is, with all due respect, the marathon of awards galas. FGI is a professional organization that brings together executives from every corner of the industry—beauty, retail, design, technology, sustainability, and so forth—and that means there were a lot of awards and a lot of speeches at last night’s gala at Cipriani Wall Street. Not including a welcome from FGI president Margaret Hayes, opening remarks from Simon Doonan, and a musical performance from Tori Kelly, there were no fewer than 26 presenters and honorees who crossed the stage last night. There was Katie Holmes presenting to Roger Vivier’s Bruno Frisoni, Julia Nobis to Jonathan Anderson, Diane Kruger to Jason Wu, Allison Williams to eBay Fashion general manager Marcelle Parrish, and Tamara Mellon to Pinterest cofounder Evan Sharp, just to name a few. It was a fabulous crew of relevant boldfacers (the industry was certainly whispering about Anderson today in lieu of Raf Simons’s departure from Dior), including Justin Timberlake, who took the stage to accept the Lord Taylor Fashion Oracle Award.
Then Meryl Streep introduced Alber Elbaz for the evening’s biggest honor, the 2015 Superstar award. “Alber’s dresses for Lanvin are the only ones that when I wear them, I feel like myself, or even a better version of her,” said Streep, wearing a custom Lanvin gown in ivory—the latest home run in her longstanding relationship with the designer. Remember her gold lamé Lanvin gown when she won the Academy Award for The Iron Lady in 2012? “On the important occasions when it becomes necessary for me to be ‘Meryl Streep,’ that outsized, overpraised monument to the changing status of women in the cinema and the world, that’s when I need Alber the most. He is undaunted by all of it: my insecurities, my weight—which is 150!—my height, and my age. He just makes me feel lovely.”
Elbaz’s remarks didn’t fail to impress. Known for his trademark warmth and humility, he spent much of his speech thanking the seamstresses in his atelier, urging that we “digest” fashion a bit more slowly instead of Instagramming it, and ultimately reminding us: “All it takes to make someone a star is to give him or her a lot of love.”
