Designer of the Year
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 of 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.—Samuel Hine
Read the rest of our Designer of the Year profile with Jonathan Anderson here:
The Loewe and JW Anderson creative director is tireless force of creativity and reinvention at a time when fashion needs it most.
Most Stylish Person of the Year
In the three years since Emma Corrin’s breakout performance as the eternally stylish Princess Diana in the fourth season of Netflix’s The Crown, the actor followed in Lady Di’s path, becoming a boundary-clearing British fashion darling—which, of course, Corrin achieved by punking the very notion of “boundaries” to begin with. Corrin thrives in the middle of every possible style Venn diagram: laddish and femme, classic and playful, gamine and grungy. One of Corrin’s best experiments yet was the wheat-hued Ralph Lauren shorts suit with dapper brown derbies—expertly offset by a grown-out bleached blond buzz cut—that they wore to Wimbledon back in July. Pulling up to a famously stodgy occasion in one of the coolest outfits of the year is a feat of style worth celebrating. —Eileen Cartter
Store of the Year
Creative directors Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran have established Lemaire as the go-to label for the kind of elegant, durable fashion that make creative, stylish folks go gaga. And now they have a flagship to shop that is just as tasteful and tactile as the clothes. The boutique’s hand-cut Moroccan bejmat clay-tile floor and modernist wooden Enzo Mari furniture are worth the visit alone. Opened in March in the Marais, the two-floor, 3,680-square-foot store isn’t jam-packed with clothes—each rack is given its space. Shopping here is like taking a nice stroll, allowing you to notice things, whether it’s the details of the clothes or the hand-knotted rugs on the floor. It’s bright and breezy and as pleasant as a quiet Parisian garden—a tranquil vibe for our frenetic world. —Noah Johnson
Trend of the Year
Yes, Succession had a lot to do with it. Kendall Roy’s never-ending procession of Loro Piana overcoats and Ermenegildo Zegna suits turned those elusive upper-crust labels into household names and minted “stealth wealth” and “quiet luxury” as the style buzzwords du jour. But there’s something else in the air that’s made the graceful, understated aesthetics of elite Italian houses like Zegna, LP, and Brunello Cucinelli stick around in the public consciousness and wardrobes of both actual and aspirant billionaires everywhere. After several years of freaky, off-the-wall, no-rules fashion dominating the streets, it was only a matter of time before something a touch more refined took hold again—and the soft tailoring, pleasing palettes, and exquisite textiles of Italy’s finest were there to fill the void. —Yang Yi-Goh
Sneaker of the Year
Last year, the Montreal design studio JJJJound dropped a collaborative spin on the Asics Gel-Kayano 14, a performance running shoe from 2008 whose techy design was suddenly a perfect match for the current sneaker climate. It sold out in seconds and still regularly moves for upwards of $500 on StockX. It wasn’t long before sneakerheads realized that JJJJound’s take on the Gel-Kayano 14 wasn’t all that different from the widely available regular version. And Asics, of course, was all too happy to keep pumping the model out in a slew of sick colorways. Fast-forward to today, and metallic retro runners have emerged as the dominant kicks of the moment—and the Asics Gel-Kayano 14 still reigns supreme at the heart of it all. —Y.G.
Show of the Year
Maybe it was inevitable that Pharrell Williams’s debut show as the new men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton would be one of the biggest fashion events of all time. He is, after all, the biggest celebrity to ever hold the top design position at a global luxury brand. But the spectacle on Paris’s historic Pont Neuf, the oldest-standing bridge over the River Seine, surpassed all expectations. The gold runway was lined with first-name-only celebs—Rocky and Rihanna, Jay and Beyoncé, Zendaya, LeBron, Kim. The collection was opulent and cool and full of surprises—including a stack of “Damouflage” trunks being hauled by a golf cart. And the party was lit. Hov himself performed a tribute to the new king of high fashion. With Pharrell onstage beside him, Hov told the crowd what they already knew: “This young man tonight did something extraordinary.” —N.J.
Accessory of the Year
Neckties were everywhere this year. You saw them on fashion insiders on the streets of Paris, on club kids at damp New York parties, on your coworker at the office on a random Tuesday morning. And unlike in times past, when it was all about your tie being the right width, now all conventions are out the door. These folks aren’t wearing ties only in deference to some antiquated formal tradition, they’re doing it because they want to—because it looks fly and feels uniquely novel in these very dressed-down times. —Y.G.
Look of the Year
You don’t have to be a wildlife photographer on safari to appreciate the glory of a vest bedecked in tactical pockets. But the sublime essence of this look from Prada designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’s most recent collection is in the underlying simplicity—a crisp white shirt and pair of blue jeans. It’s an undefeated combo, elevated to the max by two of the great designers in fashion history. Here, in their own words, is what the designers had in mind:
“We start with the white shirt—the most simple. And from that base, from a base of the most basic and normal, you can do whatever you like. It allows transformation, and individuality. Talking about bodies, you speak about individuals—the individuality of people, and therefore about an individuality of thinking.” —Miuccia Prada
“We began everything from the idea of shirting, its structure, its lightness. We were thinking a lot about the body—to give freedom to the body, even if our interest is to show references to archetypes and architecture in fashion, which is usually restrictive. So we applied the structure to a whole spectrum of masculine garments, giving them all lightness, an ease and comfort.” —Raf Simons
Maverick of the Year
For the past decade, Fear of God founder and creative director Jerry Lorenzo has steadily built an American luxury empire by playing his own game. No fashion shows, no FOG retail stores. Rather than abiding by the industry’s traditional seasonal churn, Lorenzo releases his collections when they’re ready—sometimes six months apart, sometimes years. He has resisted the lure of outside money, preferring to grow the brand himself, a business plan he compares to Nipsey Hussle’s “double up” mantra, and one that affords him complete creative freedom. “I’m not in this,” Lorenzo says, “to ever have to answer to someone else.”
In April, for the brand’s 10th year, Lorenzo finally held a Fear of God runway show. An expensive landmark event at the Hollywood Bowl, it was the type of audacious production that might have given investors a heart attack. Thousands of fans pulled up, including Tinseltown heavyweights and regular customers who just love his hoodies. And practically every single person was draped in Fear of God’s comfy oversized blazers and fancy sweats, which have suddenly become the foundation of contemporary American style.
The show was a total validation of Lorenzo’s unorthodox methods, a crystal--clear statement that drew the crowd to its feet. The self-taught designer founded the brand with a sense of deep conviction. He designed clothes of effortless sophistication for his own closet, which changed as his tastes did, from elevated streetwear to made-in--Italy tailoring. He launched the lower-priced Essentials line, but didn’t dumb it down. It’s now a runaway commercial success, one that matches his lofty intentions: “How,” he asks, are these clothes “making the customer become the best version of who they are?”
Lorenzo’s maverick spirit doesn’t take a backseat in big boardrooms either. He signed a deal with Adidas in 2020, and the first pieces of that long-anticipated collaboration finally hit the runway at the Bowl, and are just now rolling out. The wait was, of course, intentional. “I find my peace in the product,” he says. “There’s nothing else that’s directing us.” —S.H.
Watch of the Year
In 1963, the Carrera Chronograph entered the world as a watch for auto-racing enthusiasts with a taste for good design. This year, TAG Heuer celebrated the 60th anniversary of its flagship watch with a radical new design for the brand—the gorgeous Carrera Glassbox, with its internal bezel—and a major pop culture cameo, courtesy of Ryan Gosling as Ken in Barbie. At the same time, TAG released a suite of grail-level vintage models, like the yacht-worthy Skipper and the Gold Carrera Chronograph, made after a watch that was beloved by Ferrari drivers in the ’70s, allowing the Carrera to assert itself as one of the all-time great sport watches. —Cam Wolf
A version of this story originally appeared in the 2023 Men of the Year issue with the title “The 2023 GQ Fashion Awards”
