In Venice, Amal Clooney, Rita Ora, and Nancy Pelosi attend the 2023 DVF Awards

In a sea of so often self-congratulatory awards ceremonies, Diane Von Furstenberg and The Diller – von Furstenberg Family Foundation’s DVF Awards have, for 14 years now, earmarked women making notable change. Taking place in the historic gardens and pillared buildings of Fondazione Cini on the Isola San Giorgio Maggiore, this year saw UN trailblazers, AI discrimination experts, and ecological activists receive accolades from the likes of Rita Ora and Dame Emma Thompson.

Among those awarded was Amal Clooney, who arrived at the event arm-in-arm with her husband– a rare spot of an off-duty actor amid the SAG-AFTRA strike. Together, before the event formally kicked off, the pair milled around the garden with members of the von Furstenberg family who came in support of the ceremony. Ora, arriving in a sheer black gown, caught up with the honoree she was presenting an award to later, the storyteller and gender advocate Lilly Singh.

Emma Thompson, speaking in fluent Italian to journalists, spoke of her love of the city. “I want to learn how to row!” she said, laughing, in reference to the gondolas that rode through choppy waters of the city. She was wearing a dress; a rarity for the pant-suit-favoring actor. Von Furstenberg had convinced her to do so.

After an acapella performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Jewel, the ceremony opened with an address from speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, who said in her speech that “Venice was the woman at the end of the rainbow.” Shortly after, Singh collected her award from an emotional Ora, speaking about the cumulative impact of shame on women.

The rest of the evening’s celebrated women were not celebrities, nor did they demand the unbridled attention of the journalists, but their platformed moments were the evening’s most powerful. American Dr. Joy Buolamwini, an expert on the ways in which AI is dangerously impacting women’s safety and privacy, ended her acceptance speech with a poem dedicated to “those on the frontlines fighting algorithmic injustice.” Ecuadorian activist Helena Gualinga recounted the recent successes her country has had in fighting back against devastating oil drilling on their land, and asked for those further afield, beyond the global south, to pay attention too.

The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina J Mohammed was introduced to the room by her own daughter—an address that had everyone in the room in tears. Mohammed, who is the most senior civil servant on the planet, stressed the importance of collective action and support for younger generations. All of the honourees receive financial support for a cause of their choosing.

Amal Clooney, a typically private person, accepted her award and thanked, among her colleagues and those she had represented as a successful human rights lawyer, her partner in the Clooney Foundation for Justice: her husband. Together they had, with the support of their network, “wag[ed] justice for women”.

She looked at him and said: “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you exist.”