The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and Vogue have honored German designer Melitta Baumeister with the 2023 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award.
The German-born fashion designer lives and works in New York, where she completed her Master of Fine Arts in fashion design at Parsons University in 2013 and founded her eponymous brand with artist Paul Jung in the same year. Her collections bridge art and fashion and feature oversized silhouettes, innovative materials and unusual shapes that have found favor at avant-garde retailers such as Dover Street Market, H. Lorenzo, Atelier and Ant/Dote.
As the winner of the 2023 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award, Baumeister will receive $300,000 in prize money and “meaningful entrepreneurial mentorship and a path to success,” the CFDA announced on Thursday.
Rachel Scott, the designer of the Diotima label, and Henry Zankov, who is behind the knitwear brand Zankov, were named runners-up. Both fashion designers will receive financial support of $100,000.
“Our CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Class of 2023 is wonderfully talented. They all have something to say about what fashion can be – and where it needs to go,” said Anna Wintour, Chief Content Officer, Condé Nast, and Global Editorial Director, Vogue.
Annual Fund winners and finalists are selected by industry judges through a series of tasks and program items that demonstrate the finalists’ creativity, innovation, business acumen and impact. The announcement was made earlier this year by Linda Evangelista and Tommy Hilfiger at Vogue’s Forces of Fashion at Condé Nast headquarters.