“American Fashion Has Impacted the World”—Tom Ford, Zendaya, Demna, and More Prove it at the CFDA Awards

The mezzanine in the back of The Grill proved a perfect vantage point to observe the guests at the CFDA Awards. In one corner, flash bulbs were firing as Tom Ford and Dapper Dan talked and posed for photos. Just steps away, Demna Gvasalia and his Balenciaga crew—model Eliza Douglas, CEO Cedric Charbit, and Gvasalia’s husband BFRND—gathered near a bar full of orchids. Drew Barrymore shuffled past in tulle ruffles, and Zendaya hugged her stylist Law Roach, both in custom Vera Wang. 

“I’m so happy to be back at a fashion gathering,” said Tom Ford as he stepped away from cocktails for a moment to reflect on the evening. “I’ve been Chairman of the CFDA for almost three years and this is the first CFDA Awards I’ve been able to host.”

For Ford, spending a night at The Grill and The Pool Room is something of a homecoming. He announced his partnership with Estée Lauder here in 2005, held his fall 2016 show here, and spent many lunches with the building’s legendary architect Philip Johnson at the room’s low tables. Surveying the scene tonight, Ford said, “We wanted it to be much more intimate, but still very chic.”

He had another mission for the 2021 CFDA Awards—one that, zoomed out, you could say Ford has been promoting for his entire career. (He’s got the gorgeous new book, Tom Ford 002, to prove it.) “I’m excited to show how American fashion has impacted the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world is ready to acknowledge that or not,” he said. “That is my goal, to help the rest of the world understand how much they have taken and how much America has given to fashion globally.” 

International Womenswear Designer of the Year Winner Demna Gvasalia couldn’t have agreed more. “American fashion has had the biggest impact it could have on someone like me. I was a Soviet kid who grew up in a country where people didn’t even know that fashion designer was a profession,” he said, holding his CFDA statuette. “The first time I discovered that you could be a fashion designer was when I discovered Tom Ford, when I was 10 or 11 years old. My dream of fashion actually began with discovering Tom Ford.”

“It’s not something I ever could have dreamt of to be here tonight and to have this kind of award,” Gvasalia continued. “I feel like I’ve been fighting for my place in fashion and to receive this award today, it’s like three years worth of therapy in some way. It’s the most amazing feeling, to feel heard, seen, and understood, and that’s what this award represents to me. It’s amazing. I don’t feel alone anymore.”

Feelings of visibility and acceptance permeated the evening. “It represents my community, Jamaica, and really carving out a space in the fashion industry to tell our stories,” said Emerging Designer of the Year winner Edvin Thompson of Theophilio. 

For Sara Ziff, the founder of The Model Alliance, the Positive Social Influence Award was not only a moment of recognition, but an opportunity to continue the conversation around models’ rights. “It’ll be a decade [since I started the Model Alliance] in February so it’s been quite a long road. Of course it’s nice to be recognized, but I wanted it to be meaningful and that’s why I used the opportunity to ask the industry to step up and do better,” she said of the decision to ask Carré Otis and Beverly Johnson to share their stories of abuse in the industry before presenting Ziff with her CFDA trophy. “What keeps me going is I know that we’re on the right side of history,” she said.