“Iris doesn’t just design clothes, she designs possibility.” – Law Roach on Iris van Herpen
BY MAGGIE DAVIS
Fashion Group International’s “Night of Stars” is the Oscars of Style, honoring the tastemakers, innovators and creative minds shaping the worlds of fashion, beauty, media and culture. The opulent Rainbow Room with decadent food and lots of major red-carpet looks (like It Girl Julia Fox in a see-through number) would be enough to win the night, but the honorees: transcendent visionaries like Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, Jordan Roth and hotelier Sarah Wetenhall are the true show-stoppers.
Superstar stylist Law Roach presents Iris van Herpen’s with the “Fashion Visionary” award. “We throw around words like icon, genius and visionary a lot,” Roach says. “But every generation or so someone comes along who reminds us of what those words really mean. Iris doesn’t just design clothes, she designs possibility.” Jordan Roth, accepting the Fashion x Art award, muses that fashion is a “daily act of self-invention, a paintbrush on the canvas of self. I’m so grateful to you for celebrating the art of me, as I celebrate the art of you.” Martha Stewart hands hotelier Sarah Wetenhall the “Leadership in Luxury Lifestyle” award for resurrecting the glamour of The Colony Hotel while preserving classic Palm Beach elegance and modernizing it for a new generation. Commando founder Kerry O’Brien remembers her first appointment with Bergdorf Goodman, walking in with nothing but a Ziploc bag and four pieces of underwear. Today, Commando is a quiet force on nearly every runway, the invisible foundation beneath fashion’s most visible moments.
The night closes with Aïda Moudachirou-Rébois, MAC Cosmetics’ Global SVP of Marketing, who accepts the “Changemaker” award and turns the stage into a celebration of inclusivity. Her words reframe beauty not as presentation, but as purpose – beauty as activism and inclusivity as luxury. The applause lasts long after Moudachirou-Rébois leaves the stage. That galvanizing energy permeates the room beyond the podium. Designer Epperson tells me his latest collection is built around romance, not as in “’I love you,’ but as in love yourself first, so you can love others.”
