CFDA Face Criticism Over This Year’s Fashion Awards Nominees.

Music by: Cabaret Nocturne – Reset Robot. Image credit: Pyer Moss X Reebok.

This year’s CFDA Fashion Awards nominations were revealed yesterday, with winners set to be announced on 14 September. However the council has faced extensive criticism for the chosen designers.

Why?

Firstly, Tom Ford is up for 2 awards despite being the chairman of the CFDA and already winning 6 awards, including lifetime achievement.

But Ford’s nomination reflects a trend in this year’s overall nominations – almost all of the chosen designers have already been nominated in previous years, like Marc Jacobs, Thom Browne and Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen.

This has led many to suggest that the nominations are a step backwards in an industry that looked set to move forward from traditional, often discriminatory practices.

Vanessa Friedman explained: “in a time when the system itself is under scrutiny in a multitude of ways — from the way its constant churn of collections and shows devalues creations to its racism — nominating a handful of very familiar names as the very best fashion has to offer simply serves to perpetrate that system.”

On top of this the Global Awards categories were extended to supposedly enlarge the nominee base, however the chosen designers were largely white, with no recognition of Asian designers who’ve had a huge impact on the industry in the last decade. 

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