Jonathan Anderson wins Fashion Designer of the Year
Third time's an Irish charm
JONATHAN ANDERSON HAS DONE IT AGAIN. A third time. The 41-year-old has won Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards held in London overnight. Some might joke it’s the luck of the Irish, but perhaps, more convincingly, the relentless pace and conceptual velocity of a designer who has helmed two of the industry’s biggest fashion houses while continuing the creative outlet of his own namesake brand: formerly Loewe, JW Anderson and, newly, Dior. True Virgo energy.
If the past year has clarified anything about Anderson’s role in contemporary fashion, it’s his ability to operate at scale without losing the peculiar edges that first made his work magnetic.
At Loewe, where his tenure has already reshaped the house’s identity, he balanced Spanish leather heritage with sculptural experimentation and a quietly curatorial instinct, placing fashion into dialogue with art, ceramics and design objects.
At JW Anderson, he continues to treat the runway as a laboratory: silhouettes bend, garments become wearable puzzles, and craft techniques collide with trickster humour.
His Dior debut earlier this year added yet another register – a complex negotiation between reverence for one of fashion’s most storied maisons and the need to assert a new generational voice.
The actual awards ceremony, staged at London’s Royal Albert Hall and hosted by Colman Domingo, carried an atmosphere of confident continuity rather than upheaval. Sarah Burton’s win for British Womenswear Designer of the Year at Givenchy neatly captured the current mood of the industry. Her appointment to the Parisian house marked the beginning of a new chapter, but her recognition here underpinned decades of quietly shaping the language of womenswear with precision tailoring fused with romance.
On the menswear front, Grace Wales Bonner took the British Menswear Designer of the Year title for her work at Wales Bonner, a label that continues to expand the vocabulary of modern masculinity with scholarly depth and sensual restraint. Clothes that engaged in a steady excavation of diasporic identity, European tailoring history and cultural hybridity, offering garments that work as intellectual propositions as much as items to be worn. An appropriate moment given her next chapter helming menswear for Hermès.
Beyond the runway disciplines, the night acknowledged fashion’s broader ecosystem. Brunello Cucinelli received the Outstanding Achievement Award, celebrating a career built on refinement, ethical manufacturing and a quiet philosophy of humanistic luxury.
Dover Street Market founders Rei Kawakubo, Adrian Joffe and Dickon Bowden received the Isabella Blow Award, underscoring their enduring role as curators of avant-garde fashion commerce. Melanie Ward was recognised posthumously for her contribution to style culture, while Chanel was formally acknowledged for a century of presence in the UK – a reminder of how houses can shape national fashion identities across generations.
Taken together, this year’s awards painted a portrait of fashion less obsessed with novelty for novelty’s sake, and more attentive to the continuity of ideas: designers refining their languages, institutions reinforcing creative ecosystems, and cultural figures extending fashion’s reach beyond clothes alone.
The Fashion Awards 2025 – Full Winners List
Designer of the Year
Jonathan Anderson for Dior and JW Anderson
British Womenswear Designer of the Year
Sarah Burton for Givenchy
British Menswear Designer of the Year
Grace Wales Bonner for Wales Bonner
Vanguard Award
Dilara Fındıkoğlu for Dilara Fındıkoğlu
Model of the Year
Anok Yai
Outstanding Achievement Award
Brunello Cucinelli
Cultural Innovator Award
Little Simz
Costume Designer of the Year
Kate Hawley
Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator
Rei Kawakubo, Adrian Joffe and Dickon Bowden
Pandora Style Moment of the Year Award
Sam Woolf
Posthumous Outstanding Contribution to Fashion Award
Melanie Ward
Special Recognition Award – 25 Years of Fashion East
Lulu Kennedy and Raphaelle Moore
Special Recognition Award – 15 Years of BFC Fashion Trust
BFC Fashion Trust, accepted by Tania Fares
Special Recognition Award – 100 Years in the UK
Chanel
Special Recognition Award
Delphine Arnault
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