Fashion Scholarship Fund Honors Anna Wintour, Emma Grede
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The Fashion Scholarship Fund returned Monday night with its 86th annual awards celebration, which honored Condé Nast chief content officer and Vogue global editorial director Anna Wintour; Good American chief executive officer and cofounder Emma Grede and the 127 members of the organization’s 2023 Class of Scholars.
The cocktail party, hosted at New York’s Glasshouse, brought together the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, Sergio Hudson, Martha Stewart, Coco Rocha, Phillip Lim, Todd Snyder, Emily Bode, Shannon Abloh and others. The event was hosted by Karlie Kloss, who kicked off the evening talking about the importance of mentorship for the group of students.
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“As someone who has worked in the fashion industry from a very young age, I understand how important it is to find trusted mentors from the beginning,” she said. “The Fashion Scholarship Fund provides both mentorship and the opportunities that are crucial to professional development. This is something that I am so grateful to experience every day as I work with students through my organization, Kode With Klossy.”
To facilitate that evening’s programming, Kloss was joined onstage by Hudson, who spoke with WWD prior to the event about his support of the Fashion Scholarship Fund.
“Anything that’s supporting the youth and people that want to be in fashion, I want to be a part of it because it was so hard for me to enter this industry,” he said. “Anything that people want to do to make it easier for the next generation, I want to be a part of. That’s why I flew overnight from L.A. to make sure I was here.”
Of the 127 students being celebrated, the Fashion Scholarship Fund brought four finalists — Washington University in St. Louis student Olivia Baba, LIM College student Clay Lute, University of Florida student Sofia Enriquez and University of Minnesota student Julian Tong — who were in the running for the organization’s $25,000 Chairman’s Award. The award ultimately went to Lute, who is also a Virgil Abloh Post-Modern Scholar.
During her acceptance speech, Wintour dedicated her award to the late Virgil Abloh and urged the students to look to the designer’s generosity and creativity as a model for their own careers.
“I’d never met someone who approached new projects with such evident joy,” she said. “To talk to Virgil — or mostly to listen, for he was a great talker, a volcano of ideas — was to be filled with optimism. That anything was possible — streetwear could marry easily with couture, a skateboarder could become a graphic designer, a furniture maker, a collector, a fashion leader. One could curate a museum show in Chicago, mount a collection in Paris and DJ a party in Miami, all seemingly at the same time.”
Grede used her speech to talk about the importance of believing in yourself and having a strong work ethic.
“To be successful in this industry, I think you need two things: unwavering self-belief and an unmatched work ethic,” she said. “I’ve believed in me for forever. I wake up every day beyond grateful and ready to grind. I know who I am and I know where I’m going and I know exactly what I’m here to do. I always have. I’ve had a job since I was 14 years old, and I feel like at the ripe old age of 40 I’m just getting started. The message to all you students is that you have to keep believing in yourself because if you don’t, no one else will.”
Launch Gallery: Inside the Fashion Scholarship Fund 86th Annual Awards Gala
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