THE 2023 FASHION AWARDS

This year, fashion's unfiltered freaky era met traditional menswear in a spectacular head-on collision. These are the designers, brands, and trends that rose above the rest in the sublime wreckage.

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DESIGNER OF THE YEAR
JONATHAN ANDERSON

JONATHAN ANDERSON has our full attention. In 2023, the creative director of Loewe and JW Anderson set men's fashion off on a bold, new trajectory by flexing his unique capacity for reinvention. At a moment when industry trends continued toward endlessly iterative products, Anderson instead reveled in the weirdness and comedy of clothing, and closed out a string of sensational runway shows by tapping into a beguiling and novel attitude for menswear.

Anderson swept into his 10th year at Loewe-an unusually lengthy tenure these days-driven by the conviction that the fashion world is in dire need of fresh ideas. "There was a moment where fashion was really finding a new kind of ground," he tells me recently. "Now, it's become a bit jaded." He likens what's happening in the industry to a once-great television series that's in the late-season doldrums. In fashion, he says, "I feel like we're at this extended episode something that made a lot of money and that we're going to try to keep going-and then realize that the audience is no longer there for it."

Even the self-critical Anderson will allow that this year was rewarding and unexpected. His milestone spring-summer '24 menswear show, he says, "will probably be in my top-five collections I've ever done." He also dressed Rihanna for the Super Bowl halftime show and Beyoncé for her blockbuster world tour, costumed the forthcoming Luca Guadagnino film Queer, and collaborated with enough cultural luminaries to fill a crossword, including Roger Federer, Lynda Benglis, and Wellipets. "I always felt like he understands people who have a very clear vision, in a creative sense, and I think it's because he has that," the actor Josh O'Connor, a Loewe campaign fixture, tells me.