Jonathan Anderson, the creative director of JW Anderson and Loewe, was named Designer of the Year at the 2023 Fashion Awards, an event that was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on December 4th.
The British Fashion Awards is an annual large-scale ceremony that has been in practice since 1989. It’s run by the British Fashion council, whose goal is to recognize individuals who have made the most significant contributions to fashion each year. The event hosts several celebrities and occasionally British royalty, as Princess Diana attended in 1989. This year, many well known celebrities attended, such as Anne Hathaway, Andrew Garfield, Kate Moss, and FKA Twigs.
The Designer of the Year Award was the highest accolade that the ceremony gave out this year. It awards a British or international designer who released a collection that had made a large impact on the fashion industry and on global fashion as a whole. Jonathan Anderson won the award for his work with Loewe, a Spanish luxury fashion house, and for his work on collections within his own brand, JW Anderson. For the award, Anderson beat many big names in the industry, such as Sarah Burton, Matthieu Blazy, Raf Simons, Daniel Lee, and even Miuccia Prada, the head of luxury brands Prada and Miu Miu. This isn’t Anderson’s first award, either. He was the first individual to be awarded with both the Menswear and Womenswear designer of the year award at the British Fashion awards in 2015, and has won several more awards for his work, like the Emerging Talent – Ready to Wear award in 2012, The New Establishment Award in 2013, Menswear Designer of the Year in 2014, and Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2017.
Anderson’s desires to achieve stardom began at a young age. In 1984, he was born in Northern Ireland as the son of Willie Anderson, an Irish Rugby player, and Heather Buckley, a school teacher. He had a deep appreciation for fashion and Hollywood as a child and graduated from the London College of Fashion in 2005. Three years later, Anderson launched his own menswear brand JW Anderson at the age of 24, and soon added Womenswear to the brand in 2010. Throughout the decade, he has worked with many top name brands and celebrities, including Prada, Topshop, and Unilqo. In 2019, he became a trustee for the Victoria and Albert Museum, a museum in London that holds the world’s largest collection of all things related to applied arts, decorative arts, and design. Most recently, he designed the red dress that Rihanna wore during her half-time performance at the 2023 Superbowl.
After being called up to the stage at the British Fashion Awards to receive his Designer of the Year trophy, Jonathan Anderson gave the following speech, “It’s an amazing honor to be up here. The journey that you go through as a designer – it’s an amazing thing that we have in Britain. We support on all different levels and it’s quite scary to be up here, because you realize what an amazing place we live and how lucky we all are.”
To close out the night, Anderson made an Instagram post featuring his trophy and various snapshots of his year’s highlights, captioned, “It’s an amazing honor to be up here. The journey that you go through as a designer – it’s an amazing thing that we have in Britain. We support on all different levels and it’s quite scary to be up here, because you realize what an amazing place we live and how lucky we all are.”
