It has been a good month for the designer Ashlynn Park and her namesake label, Ashlyn.
Within a week, she took home two of the biggest awards for rising designers in the American fashion industry. Ms. Park was named emerging designer of the year at the CFDA Fashion Awards, or “Oscars of Fashion,” on Nov. 3. On Nov. 10, she won the Fashion Fund award, an annual prize given by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Vogue, including $300,000 for her brand.
Ms. Park, 43, started her brand in 2020 after working as a patternmaker for other designers, including Yohji Yamamoto and Alexander Wang. “I was just a designer who does what I like, but now I feel some responsibility,” she said in an interview just after winning the Fashion Fund award. “To be honest, getting two awards in a row, I feel very pressured.”
She accepted the prize at a ceremony that drew a glittering crowd of designers, executives, models and muses to Crane Club in Manhattan. Anna Wintour, Vogue’s global editorial director, was a host, along with her recently appointed successor at American Vogue, Chloe Malle.
Ms. Park attended the ceremony wearing her own designs: a layered cream-and-white peplum blouse over a floor-length slip skirt. She beat out nine other finalists, two of whom — the designers Julian Louis of Aubero and Stephanie Suberville of Heirlome — were named runners-up and received $100,000 each.
The Fashion Fund award, since its introduction in 2004, has been seen as a launchpad for American talent. The first winners, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler, recently received top designer jobs at Loewe.
But the award by no means guarantees a designer’s relevance. While many recipients, like Telfar Clemens, Joseph Altuzarra and Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, have maintained their influence, others have faded away.
Ms. Park, after winning, said she planned to take things “one step at a time.”
The designer Zac Posen, the creative director at Gap Inc., a former Fashion Fund winner and a host of this year’s award ceremony, said in remarks to the crowd that “creativity is a lifelong pursuit.”
Later, in an interview, he said that his career had exemplified how working in fashion could be a journey full of surprises. “It is a game of endurance, of continuous reinvention, sometimes survival,” Mr. Posen said.
Shop Talk
- Antonin Tron — founder of the women’s wear label Atlein and an alumnus of Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Balenciaga — was named the next creative director of Balmain on Wednesday. He succeeds Olivier Rousteing, who announced his departure last week after 14 years as Balmain’s top designer. Mr. Tron, 41, will start the job this month and is expected to show his first collection at Paris Fashion Week next March.
- The men’s wear designer Haider Ackermann just released his third collection for Canada Goose, one of the brands where he is creative director. (The other is Tom Ford.) Willie Nelson is the face of Mr. Ackerman’s latest Snow Goose collection, which includes reflective anoraks, technical pants and T-shirts at prices from $225 to $1,775.
- The designer Peter Do is selling items from PD-168, his diffusion line of wardrobe basics, at a pop-up in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Open Nov. 14 through 16, and again Nov. 21 to 23, the pop-up will also offer on-site embroidery and tailoring.
- The model Lila Moss, daughter of Kate Moss, is the face of a new pajama collection from Cou Cou Intimates, maker of cotton underwear and pointelle tops. The line’s items, which include sleep wear in solids and a blue checker print, start at $120.
- “From Louis to Vuitton,” a new coffee table book written by Arthur Dreyfus and published by Assouline, focuses on Louis Vuitton’s evolution from luggage maker to fashion behemoth, and the ways Marc Jacobs, Virgil Abloh and other artistic directors of the brand have shaped it. Like most things from the luxury brand, the book is not cheap: It costs $250.
Chatting With … the CEO of a Brand With Aspirations as Big as Its Puffer Coats
When Jennifer Wong was in college in Vancouver, British Columbia, she took a part-time job at the Canadian retailer Aritzia for extra cash. That was 38 years ago. Today, Ms. Wong, 56, is running the company: She became its chief executive in 2022.
Since going public in 2016, Aritzia, which offers women’s wear priced somewhere between the cost of luxury goods and fast fashion, has reported earnings that grew to $1.7 billion, in 2024, from $667 million, in 2017. Known best by some for its Super Puff winter coats, the brand is opening a new store in the Flatiron district of Manhattan this month.
That location is one of dozens Aritzia is planning to open across the United States, as the retailer aims to nearly double its footprint to 150 stores in the coming years. In a conversation that has been edited and condensed, Ms. Wong spoke about the current retail climate and shared advice for other Canadian brands attempting to build customer bases in the U.S.
How has Aritzia managed this tense economic moment for Canada and the United States?
We’ve navigated it by staying agile and focused. When tariffs and trade rules began to shift, we created a task force to respond quickly.
At one point, about 30 percent of our manufacturing was in China. Today, that’s down to the low single digits, and no single country now represents more than roughly a quarter of our production. That balance has been critical.
What advice would you give other Canadian brands that want to build a customer base in the U.S. in the current economic climate?
What has helped us is staying nimble and flexible, no matter our size. The retail landscape changes constantly. The only way to survive that is to build adaptability into your operations and keep an entrepreneurial mind-set. Be ready to pivot quickly, test new ideas and move resources where they’re needed most.
You’ve seen decades of change in retail. Has anything about customers’ behavior stayed the same?
It comes down to personalization: They want the experience, the product and even the communication to feel designed for them.
Yola Mzizi is a reporter for the Styles section and a member of the 2025-2026 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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