Rachel Scott, Ralph Lauren, Ana Khouri and Colleen Allen won the four American designer categories at the 2026 CFDA Fashion Awards, recognising distinct approaches to craft and design.
Rachel Scott won American Womenswear Designer of the Year for Diotima and Ralph Lauren took the menswear honour at the 2026 CFDA Fashion Awards, placing a designer closely associated with Jamaican craft alongside one of American fashion’s longest-established names. Ana Khouri won the accessory category, while Colleen Allen received the emerging-designer award.
The results were announced at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on Monday, 2 November, at a ceremony hosted by Keke Palmer. The CFDA’s winners announcement confirms the four competitive awards. Together, they recognise clothing, jewellery and emerging talent whose work reaches beyond a single seasonal look.
Scott’s second win puts Jamaican craft in focus
For Scott, the womenswear award follows a victory in the same category in 2024. The CFDA also identifies her as creative director of Proenza Schouler, while making clear that this year’s award recognises her work for Diotima. Those two roles give her an unusual position across an independent label and an established New York house.
The CFDA’s profile of Scott traces Diotima’s beginnings to 2021 and describes a wardrobe developed between Jamaica and New York. All of the label’s crochet is made in Jamaica. Its tailoring uses British heritage tweeds alongside tropical wools and basketweaves from Italian mills. The materials and production relationships make the Caribbean connection part of how the clothes are made.
Scott’s earlier experience at Costume National in Italy and J. Mendel in New York informs that combination of construction, fabric and handwork. Read alongside the award, this background helps explain the distinctiveness of Diotima: crochet sits within a broader wardrobe that includes tailoring, with Jamaican artisans contributing to its visual identity and manufacture.
Lauren’s recognition crosses womenswear and menswear
Lauren’s menswear victory comes a year after his American Womenswear Designer of the Year award, according to the CFDA. Matt Damon and Tremaine Emory presented the new honour. The sequence draws attention to the breadth of a design career the organisation describes as spanning more than five decades.
The full results published by Fashionista place Lauren in a menswear field that also included Thom Browne, Todd Snyder, Willy Chavarria, and Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne for Public School New York. Scott’s womenswear category included Catherine Holstein for Khaite, Michael Kors, Tory Burch and Wes Gordon for Carolina Herrera. The winners therefore emerge from fields with markedly different design languages.
Jewellery earns a place through sculptural design
Khouri’s accessory win brings jewellery into the centre of this year’s results. Her practice has a direct connection with sculpture: her official biography says she studied fine arts with a specialisation in sculpture before turning to jewellery in 2002. She opened her New York salon in 2013.
That biography also records exhibitions at Phillips and Sotheby’s, as well as Christie’s Paris in 2023. It describes her one-of-a-kind high jewellery as presented at the New York salon and her limited-edition collections as available through The Row’s stores. These details locate her work between the gallery, the specialist salon and fashion retail.
Her award category was wider than jewellery alone. Fashionista’s results list includes The Row, Luar, Sophie Buhai and Coach among the other nominees. Khouri’s recognition consequently sits within a conversation about accessories as designed objects, where shape, proportion and the relationship to the wearer can carry as much identity as a garment.
Allen brings historical references into an emerging label
Allen’s emerging-designer award adds a newer independent voice to the winners. In an interview published by AnOther this autumn, her work is described through historical garment forms, including corsets, bloomers, petticoats and Victorian tailoring, reworked into softer contemporary clothing.
The same profile records her training at Parsons and Central Saint Martins, experience at Calvin Klein and The Row, and the launch of her label in 2024. It connects her approach to an interest in dressing as a ritual and to an exploration of femininity. That gives the award a concrete design context beyond the broad promise implied by the word “emerging”.
The evening also recognised fashion’s wider contributors
The CFDA’s post-event release records International Designer of the Year for Anthony Vaccarello, the Positive Change Award for Tory Burch, and the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award for photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Peter Marino received the Fashion Icon Award; Gap Inc. received the Innovation Award.
Other honourees included Eva Chen, Linda Fargo and Susan Cianciolo. The programme also looked towards education: the organisation announced a CFDA and WYouth scholarship, presented by Nuuly, launching in 2027 to fund two students. That is a specific future commitment alongside the evening’s recognition of established work.
An industry vote with a defined scope
The CFDA explains that the four American designer categories are decided by its Fashion Awards Guild, an invitation-only body that includes designers, editors, journalists, retail executives, stylists and other industry participants. Voting took place in October.
The results express that professional electorate’s judgement. They do not measure sales or prescribe a single direction for what people should wear. Their more useful connection is the range of work recognised: Jamaican crochet and tailoring, an extensive American design tradition, sculptural jewellery and a young label’s reinterpretation of historical dress.
Sources
CFDA: The 2026 Fashion Awards winners; CFDA: Rachel Scott profile; Fashionista: Full award results; Ana Khouri: Official biography; AnOther: Colleen Allen interview; CFDA/PR Newswire: Post-event announcement; CFDA: Nominees and voting process.
