2026 Winners
Designer of the Year
Tory Burch
Lifetime Achievement Award
Michèle Lamy
Ready-to-Wear Award
LII
Zane Li
Born and raised in Chongqing, China, Zane Li moved to New York City in the fall of 2019 to attend FIT. He graduated from his ready-to-wear studies in the spring of 2023, after which he promptly started work on his eponymous line, LII. For the next six months, Li worked thoughtfully on developing his brand identity, design ethos and first womenswear collection, which he unveiled during the fall-winter 2024 season of New York Fashion Week in February 2024. Focusing heavily on couture shapes in sporty colors and active materials, the critically acclaimed collection was hailed as "a promising debut" by Harper's Bazaar, with Li recognized as "one to watch" and a "rising star" from the likes of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Vogue and WWD. The press reception followed with an exclusive order from SSENSE. In the two years since, Li has grown his business 5 times (with stockists in Italy, France, Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Canada and the US); dressed celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence, Ayo Edibiri, Greta Lee and Britt Lower; had his designs photographed by legendary fashion photographers like Alasdair McLellan, Mark Borthwick, Mark Kean and Jamie Hawkesworth; been profiled in W Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine; and just this past spring, presented his first runway presentation during New York Fashion Week.
Jewelry Award
Josefina Baillères
Josefina Baillères blends her Mexican-American heritage with a multidisciplinary background in gemology, art, design, and fashion to create jewelry that feels deeply personal. Her philosophy centers on intention, longevity, and uncompromising craftsmanship-jewelry meant to be worn, lived with, and passed on. Drawn to antique and historical gemstones, she approaches each piece with meticulous attention, favoring slow, considered processes that honor tradition and meaning. Trained at Parsons, Central Saint Martins, GIA, and the Haute École de Joaillerie, Josefina works closely with master artisans in Paris and New York to ensure every creation carries enduring value and artistry.
Accessories Award
Andrea Marron
Andrea Marron is the founder and creative director of her Miami-based studio. It was established in 2024 to create sculptural handbags that merge the intuition of craft with the precision of engineering. The daughter of an engineer and inventor with 35 patents, she grew up watching her father tinker and build in their basement laboratory, where she learned how ideas could become tangible through persistence and imagination. That early exposure to invention sparked a lifelong fascination with how objects are made, how design reflects our world, and how creation itself can be a form of problem-solving. With degrees in Optical Engineering from the University of Rochester and Engineering Management from Dartmouth, Andrea began her career in engineering. Seeking to work closer to fashion and the creative process, she later pivoted to lead e-commerce and retail strategy for New York-based designer Nicole Miller. After that, she co-founded and sold the software company Ragtrades, which developed analytics tools for fashion and luxury brands. Drawn further from technology into craft, Andrea founded her studio to use engineering as a tool for artistic expression. Her work is inspired by nature's intelligence and explores organic forms. Each piece features curves and biomorphic shapes that echo the natural world. Every handbag is created through technical experimentation and close collaboration with master craftspeople and young artisans in family-owned workshops in Italy and the United States. Her goal is to evolve craft for the future, making it compelling again for the next generation by bridging tradition and technology, hand and machine, nature and innovation. She believes in excellence over scale, fairness over profit, and longevity over excess. Andrea's work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and worn by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Chriselle Lim.
Graduate Award
Marcelle Barbosa
Marcelle was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She moved to New York to attend Parsons School of Design, pursuing her studies in fashion design. During her time there, she gained hands-on industry experience through internships with Area and Alexander Wang, among others, further refining her creative process and technical foundation.
Marcelle is dedicated to preserving the artistry and craftsmanship that define true luxury while reimagining them through a sustainable and modern lens. Her goal as a designer is to create pieces that honor heritage, emotion, and individuality, merging couture-level technique with a responsible approach to consumption and production. Through her brand, Amaramara in partnership with co-founder Inanna Sarkis, she aims to prove that sustainability and high craftsmanship can coexist as the new standard of modern luxury.
Sustainability Award
Pisces Rising
Deborah Won
Deborah’s interest in clothing began through dance, where music, movement, and costume first shaped her understanding of how garments support the body. Drawn to construction from an early age, she would turn costumes inside out to study stretch panels, trims, and the technical details that allowed for motion.
She began her fashion career at Opening Ceremony and Converse, building a foundation in commercial womenswear, materials, and design execution. Over more than a decade, she developed a practice rooted in problem-solving, innovation, and making ambitious ideas possible within real-world constraints.
Deborah pursued her MFA in Fashion Design at FIT, where her thesis explored fashion for zero-gravity environments and imagined how clothing might evolve in her daughter’s lifetime.
Alongside work with designers including Sandy Liang and C. Vernoy, she developed Pisces Rising, outfitting stage performers, red carpet clients, dancers, and ice skaters.
Through Pisces Rising, she creates genre-crossing apparel that bridges athletics and high-fashion technique, a concept she calls “athlevening.”