The First Annual GQ Fashion Awards

Designer of the Year: Miuccia Prada

The thinking person's designer transcends the influencer age with clothes that are both urgent and eternal.

This year’s Met Gala was a spectacle of look-at-me fashion, with guests arriving on divans, inside chandeliers, and on foot with their own head in their hands. And then there was Frank Ocean, who didn’t so much arrive as show up, looking like the valet, in all-black Prada. It was an elegant snub of the “camp” theme, totally anti-status—and classic Prada. “Doing fashion with me, I thought that they never wanted to exaggerate,” says Miuccia Prada. “When it’s too much ‘fashion,’ it’s never right.” When we meet in Milan for an interview and photo session in a hangar-like space at the Fondazione Prada, she says that her contribution to men’s clothing has been “to make a little bit of fashion to free them. But not too much.” To wear Prada, Ocean’s look coyly reminded us, is to use your mind to put on clothes: to take an intellectually rigorous approach to getting dressed. Mrs. Prada, you see, comes not simply for people’s wallets, but also—like the figure who inspired her Fall 2019 collection, Dr. Frankenstein—for people’s brains. “Clothes can help you express yourself,” she says, “but what counts is who you are, and what you think, and how to behave.” —Rachel Tashjian

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Look of the Year: Celine, Fall-Winter 2019

Every time the visionary designer Hedi Slimane reimagines the suit, it leads to a fashion revolution. This time, for his menswear debut at Celine, he introduced a double-breasted jacket with double-pleated pants. Sharp, with just a hint of slouch. Here, in his own words, how the first look from his fall-winter 2019 collection came to be. —Noah Johnson

“For the past 20 years, I've been pursuing the idea of the black suit, constantly redesigning it, experimenting with new proportions and shoulders, producing exclusive crisp black gabardine.

From 19th-century French romanticism and dandyism to 1960s rock 'n' roll or '80s new wave, the black suit is the epitome of sartorial menswear. It is perfect architecture and therefore one of the most difficult pieces to design.

In a time dominated by gimmicks and sportswear, I decided to open the first Celine menswear show with a square-shouldered double-breasted black suit in structured gabardine. I wished to go back to the essence of what I do, without any distraction. Returning to classics, to the modernity of sharp tailoring.” —Hedi Slimane, artistic, creative, and image director, Celine

Watch of the Year: Rolex GMT-Master II "Batman"

GMT season continues. In 1955, Rolex introduced the GMT-Master, which allowed pilots and travelers to keep track of two time zones at once. The original, in a red-and-blue “Pepsi” colorway, soon became one of the most iconic steel sports timepieces of all time. Last year, the watch world collectively gasped when Rolex dropped an update of the long-coveted Pepsi model. The new version—which features the luxe upgrades of modern horology plus a flashy new jubilee bracelet—set off GMT (that's Greenwich Mean Time, by the way) mania, selling out instantly. This year, just when we had all caught our breath, Rolex dropped another bomb: a revamped GMT in the utterly badass black-and-blue “Batman” colorway. Better get Alfred on the phone quick, because the Batman is already going for about twice its retail price of $9,250 on the secondary market. —Samuel Hine

Accessory of the Year: The Men's It Bag

When Young Thug bragged “I got me a Birkin” in 2017, it was clear: Handbags aren't just for women anymore.

In 2019, the trend solidified into a full-on movement, as men moved beyond the fanny pack to the purse—the ultimate symbol of fashion obsession. Ansel Elgort slung a black leather doctor's bag over the crook of his arm, Lil Uzi Vert skyrocketed across the stage with a classic Chanel flap bag across his shoulder, and Frank Ocean swanned through Paris Fashion Week with a forest green Celine luggage tote. Jaden Smith's UFO-shaped Louis Vuitton minaudière says it all: Men's fashion is now living on a whole new planet. —R.T.

Sneaker of the Year: Salomon S/Lab XT-6

In a sneaker market driven by hype and exclusivity, the fact that a technical performance runner was able to cut through all the noise—and become a genuine hit—is a bit a of a surprise, especially for the guy who created it. “There's not a chance that I would've ever expected this to happen,” says Salomon's Benjamin Grenet, who designed the XT-6 back in 2012. Now the shoe made for running 100-mile ultramarathons in the Alps is a globally recognized status symbol for the fashion crowd. —Yang-Yi Goh

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Graphic Tees of the Year

The beauty of the graphic-tee boom of 2019 is that the best designs can come from anywhere—including a sportswear giant, a streetwear stalwart, a fine-art star, a runway-fashion provocateur, or a couple of far-out Deadheads. —N.J. & S.H.

Photographs by Matt Martin
Prop stylist: Mariana Vera/Halley Resources

Breakthrough Designer of the Year: Emily Adams Bode

“It was quite a surreal experience,” Emily Adams Bode says about winning the CFDA Emerging Designer of the Year award in June. Things got more surreal two weeks later, when she showed her fledgling brand, Bode, at Paris Fashion Week—it was a rapid ascent to fashion's major league for the relatively new designer. Her unique ability to turn soulful textiles into wavy garments—quilted jackets, silk robes, crocheted knits—has, in just three short years, established hers as a singular voice in the post-streetwear fashion landscape. Beyond the accolades are the hints of what the brand could be in a few more years: “Bode's like an American version of Visvim,” says a fan known as A$AP Ferg. “It's the stuff that I always want to wear.” —S.H.

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A version of this story originally appeared in the December/January 2020 issue with the title "The First Annual GQ Fashion Awards."

Originally Appeared on GQ