How the Council of Fashion Designers of America Got Its Start

The Council of Fashion Designers of America was founded by Eleanor Lambert in 1962, with the goal of bringing designers out of the backrooms of Seventh Avenue and into the spotlight. The mission was to help put American fashion on the map.

Lambert, who hailed from Crawfordsville, Ind., studied sculpture and did fashion sketches and fashion reporting, which led her to New York and a career that included such roles as press director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and press director of the New York Dress Institute.

More from WWD

• CFDA Through the WWD Lens

• Photos of the CFDA's 'Haute Couture' Football Helmets

• CFDA Fashion Awards 2019: See Photos of All the Nominees

In 1942, Lambert spearheaded the first press week for designers, a suggested time for collections to be complete so designers could cater to a targeted set of buyers from around the U.S., and the first Coty Awards, a forerunner to the CFDA Awards. By the ’60s, more than 200 buyers were attending the seasonal collections in New York, which began to rival the level of attendance at shows in Paris. Designers like Bill Blass and Geoffrey Beene had made their ways out of the back rooms, but there was still a pervasive feeling that Seventh Avenue was controlled by the businessmen and manufacturers, who dominated industry trade groups and the union agenda.

At that time, Sens. Claiborne Pell and Jacob Javits had approached Lambert about participating in their development of a National Council of the Arts, which would promote painting, music, dance and fashion in the U.S. But for fashion to be considered an acceptable form of American art, they required the involvement of a not-for-profit organization, rather than a commercial industry or a business.

Lambert rallied a group of designers — including Blass, Norman Norell, Jane Derby, Luis Estevez, Rudi Gernreich, Donald Brooks, Arnold Scaasi, Sydney Wragge and Ben Zuckerman — to form the CFDA. According to its charter, which was filed on Dec. 6, 1962, its mission was to “further the position of fashion design as a recognized branch of American art and culture” and “to advance its artistic and professional standards.” Within a month, other designers had joined. 

“All I did was start it,” Lambert recalled during a WWD interview in 2000. “I’ve always said that getting people together as a community helps further their identity as a whole. We were a group of people of equal qualifications and equal thoughts about moving forward. There is a difference between business people and artists. I was representing a coat manufacturer at the time who was upset that he hadn’t been included in one of our meetings, and I asked him, ‘Well, do you have a designer? I’ve never met him,’ to which he responded, ‘He’s in the back room. That’s where he should be right?'”

The change in perception was nearly instant. The largest trade group prior to the CFDA was the New York Couture Group, and had only recognized manufacturers as members. Many of them were content with the practice of traveling to Paris every season to buy gowns from the couture to make line-for-line copies, but Lambert convinced a large contingent to break off to join the CFDA.

“The main thing was to take the creative designers away, and ‘creative’ was a very important word at the moment,” Arnold Scaasi once recalled. “When she did that, it really took off.”

Lambert was instrumental in staging American fashion events around the world, including the 1973 “Battle of Versailles” designer showoff that put American talent on the global fashion radar. Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Halston, Stephen Burrows and Anne Klein showed for America, while Pierre Cardin, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior showed for Paris. 

Lambert received the CFDA Lifetime Achievement award in 1988 and the CFDA Industry Tribute Award in 1993. She died in 2003 at the age of 100.

Today, the CFDA has grown substantially and counts more than 500 of America’s top womenswear, menswear and accessory designers as members.

In addition to hosting the annual CFDA Awards, which recognizes the industry’s top talent, the organization owns the Fashion Calendar and stages New York Fashion Week: Men’s. The CFDA offers programs that support professional development and scholarships, including the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, the Geoffrey Been Design Scholarship Award, and the Liz Claiborne Design Scholarship Award.

In 2013, the Fashion Manufacturing Initiative was created to nurture, elevate and preserve garment production in New York City. Member support is provided through the strategic Partnerships Group, a high-profile group of companies offering designers strategic opportunities.

The CFDA Foundation Inc. is a separate not-for-profit organized to mobilize the membership to raise funds for charitable causes. Through the foundation, the CFDA created and manages the worldwide Fashion Targets Breast Cancer initiative, raises funds for HIV and AIDS organizations with events such as the previous Fashion’s Night Out and Seventh on Sale and addresses the issue of model health with the CFDA Health Initiative.

Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

RSVP for "A Matter of Style", a Fairchild Archive exhibition September 9-10 in New York City.

Click here to read the full article.