The Fashion Scholarship Fund returned Monday night with its 86^th 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 Recent 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 concerning the importance of mentorship for the group of scholars.

“As someone who has worked in the style industry from a really young age, I understand how essential it’s to seek out trusted mentors from the start,” she said. “The Fashion Scholarship Fund provides each mentorship and the opportunities which might be crucial to skilled development. That is something that I’m so grateful to experience each 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 who need to be in fashion, I need to be a component of it since it was so hard for me to enter this industry,” he said. “Anything that folks need to do to make it easier for the following generation, I need to be a component of. That’s why I flew overnight from L.A. to make sure that I used to be here.” 

Of the 127 students being celebrated, the Fashion Scholarship Fund brought 4 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 within the running for the organization’s $25,000 Chairman’s Award. The award ultimately went to Lute, who can be a Virgil Abloh Post-Modern Scholar. 

During her acceptance speech, Wintour dedicated her award to the late Virgil Abloh and urged the scholars to look to the designer’s generosity and creativity as a model for their very own careers. 

“I’d never met someone who approached recent projects with such evident joy,” she said. “To confer with Virgil — or mostly to listen, for he was an ideal talker, a volcano of ideas — was to be full of optimism. That anything was possible — streetwear could marry easily with couture, a skateboarder could develop into a graphic designer, a furniture maker, a collector, a fashion leader. One could curate a museum show in Chicago, mount a group in Paris and DJ a celebration in Miami, all seemingly at the identical time.”

Grede used her speech to speak concerning the importance of believing in yourself and having a powerful work ethic.

“To achieve success on this industry, I feel you would like two things: unwavering self-belief and an unmatched work ethic,” she said. “I’ve believed in me for eternally. I get up each day beyond grateful and able to grind. I do know who I’m and I do know where I’m going and I do know exactly what I’m here to do. I at all times have. I’ve had a job since I used to be 14 years old, and I feel like on the ripe old age of 40 I’m just getting began. The message to all you students is that you’ve to maintain believing in yourself because if you happen to don’t, nobody else will.”