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Underneath the big blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History, the mood at the CFDA Awards last night was buoyant, a bit like a class reunion you’re actually excited to attend. At 8 p.m. on the dot, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand took to the stage to welcome guests for an evening celebrating American fashion. “Fashion is like a dream that you can live,” she said quoting Anne Hathaway’s remarks when she did the honors last year. “But what if there’s more than just a dream? What if the creativity, the diversity, the culture that we have here tonight could actually change the world?”

If there’s anyone that knows about making their dream life a reality, it is certainly Hamish Bowles, who was honored with the Founder’s Award in Honor of Eleanor Lambert. “There is no one I know who is more sensitively connected to the past of fashion, its traditions of craft and its deep roots in centuries of art and decoration,” said Marc Jacobs, who presented the beloved British editor with his award. “But there’s also no one with a more avid eye of fashion’s present and future; of the way that it exists, not just as a concept or a new collection, but as the spark of an entire creative world that we can live within.”

Ditto for the indomitable Cuban designer Isabel Toledo, who with her husband Ruben Toledo was one-half of a wondrous dynamic duo who seemed to live a dream creative life. Isabel passed away from cancer in 2019, and was recognized with the Board of Directors Award, which was renamed in her honor. Accepting the award on her behalf, Ruben managed to make more than one attendee teary-eyed with the incandescent passion for Isabel which is very much still a part of him. “Isabel is surely with us tonight in spirit,” he said. “We always felt that our true purpose is to create heaven on earth for each other; an artist can only float as high and for as long as the audience allows them, I salute you all for inspiring Isabel to soar as high and as gracefully as she did.”

Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry, who received the International Designer Award, also spoke of the power of dreams. “The night before I moved to Paris with two suitcases and everything else I owned in storage—still at a Manhattan Mini Storage—I walked across the Williamsburg Bridge with my boyfriend Adam,” he recalled. “He told me dreams are expensive. This dream that came true of working in Paris and being an American couturier an ocean away has come at a cost; and even though I have missed my friends, I miss my family, I’ve missed my person and I’ve missed this city, I have never once questioned that Paris is where I was meant to be.”

Chloe King with Henry Zankov, winner of the emerging designer of the year award.

Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Troye Sivan with Willy Chavarria, winner of menswear designer of the year.

Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Annie Leibovitz, meanwhile, has built a career out of creating dreams with her photographs and was given the Media Award in Honor of Eugenia Sheppard. “The fashion work that she’s done for us has had astonishing range and vision, but what has tied them together is Annie’s sensibility, which is steeped in the values of journalism. Of course, we all have our favorites, but I would look around this room and guess that her iconic ‘Alice in Wonderland’ shoot is at the top of many people’s list here tonight,” said Vogue’s Anna Wintour, who presented the photographer with her award, citing one of the all-time great fantasy editorials. She and Thom Browne banded together to create a special “fashion badge of honor” for the legendary photographer since “the French gave you a very impressive sword,” she said, mentioning Leibovitz’s induction into the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris earlier this year. Leibovitz recalled her first couture shoot for Vogue back in 1999. “I was working with Grace Coddington who had doubts about me and fashion,” she said, garnering laughs from the crowd. “I worked with Grace many times after that and I think every single time she said it would be the last.”