Zane Li, the founder and creative director of the New York-based women’s and men’s fashion label Lii, came away as the winner of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, receiving $300,000 and mentorship opportunities.
The big reveal came during a celebratory cocktail party and dinner held at The Crane Club in New York City Tuesday night, hosted by Tory Burch, Thom Browne, Chloe Malle and Anna Wintour.
Among the guests were Eva Chen, Aurora James, Nicole Phelps, Christopher John Rogers, Yumi Shin, Hildy Kuryk, Vera Wang, Gabriela Hearst, Wes Gordon, Pierre-Yves Roussel, Bethann Hardison, Christian Cowan, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Tara Rudes Dann, Rachel Scott, Henry Zankov, J Dynasty Ogun, Soull Ogun, Kate Barton, Chioma Nnadi, Tanner Richie and Ashlynn Park.
The Chongqing, China-born Li, who launched his New York-based brand in 2024 shortly after graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, has had a busy year on the awards front. Li was the winner of the Fashion Trust U.S. Ready-to-Wear award in April, and last month, he won the prestigious Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the 2026 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers in Paris. Li’s designs blend minimalist ’90s silhouettes with technical sportswear and structured, avant-garde shapes.
“I’m feeling great,” Li told WWD, after receiving the award from the model Mona Tougaard, who was dressed that evening in one of Lii’s designs. “It’s great. It’s so surreal. It’s been a crazy year for us, and this is a perfect ending, right?”
Asked what he plans to do with the $300,000, Li said: “Well, definitely human resources. My husband and I are working on this brand really hard, and we barely have any help because we want to do everything ourselves, and because we don’t have the budget. I think now with the help, especially the help from America, where the brand is based, it’s a really good feeling to get support from here.”
Lii is manufactured in his home country of China. “I do all the production in China, and the design studio is in New York. I came to New York to study fashion when I was 18,” said Li.
“This is the place where I first traced my dream, and I feel like this is a good reminder for me that all the past efforts and all the past experience that I’ve had here is a good and solid. It’s a really good feeling,” said Li.
The designer said he’s going to launch with Bergdorf Goodman and is selling Nordstrom, Moda Operandi and Galeries Lafayette.
Li said he hasn’t yet expanded beyond ready-to-wear into leather goods or shoes, but they are on his to-do list. “So we definitely want to build the whole Lii universe more fully. And I feel like now we have a little wiggle room to do that,” said Li.
The CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund runners-up were Aisling Camps and Emily Dawn Long, who will each receive $100,000.
Camps, a Trinidad-born fashion designer and former mechanical engineer, graduated from Columbia University in 2008 and then studied fashion design at FIT. She is known for structural, subversive knitwear. Long, who was born and raised in Georgia, studied fashion at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She launched her independent label in 2019, and her designs and graphic T-shirts have been spotted on celebrities such as Kendrick Lamar, Justin Bieber, Jeremy Allen White, Brad Pitt and Hailey Bieber.
The rest of the 10 finalists were Amir Taghi, Terrence Zhou (Bad Binch TongTong), Jamie Haller, Julia Ferentino (JuJuVera), George Inaki (Milamore), Claire Sullivan (Miss Claire Sullivan), and Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen.
During the dinner, while the finalists were still awaiting word on who won, Taghi told WWD: “We’re all like besties. We have a group chat, and we’re all really tight.”
Before the winners were named, Browne took to the podium and said: “I want to apologize to all the basketball fans. LeBron [James] and Jalen [Brunson] personally told me that they wish they were here.” James [now with the Philadelphia 76ers] and Brunson [with the New York Knicks] faced off in the 2026-27 NBA season opener Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.
“We’re all here tonight to recognize something that is the core of American design, and that is creativity. I have always believed that the most powerful thing a designer can have is a point of view. Through individuals sharing our important stories with the world, something personal and original that only they can say. This is what defines the people in this room. The future of American fashion can only be possible by supporting this idea and one another,” said Browne.
“To our 10 finalists: This is the easy part. What comes next will be your biggest challenge,” he said. He gave the audience a synopsis of the numerous challenges he faced in building his eponymous brand and how he needed to stay true to his singular vision “of that shrunken gray suit.”
“Look around at your fellow CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists, and feel fortunate to be in the room, not knowing what the future is to hold, knowing that the one thing that should never change is the strong-willed approach to design and creativity,” said Browne.
Malle, head of editorial content at American Vogue, who was also a judge, said: “One of the things that I have always loved most about the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund is seeing how much the designers love working together, and what a camaraderie it forms among everyone….I have loved getting to know everyone and getting to know what really fuels them and drives them, and seeing the way people respond to the different challenges and assignments that have been given to them over the past four months. Everyone has done it in a unique way, and everyone has approached it differently. But everyone has impressed all of us, and that has been fantastic.”
As he was leaving the party, Browne, who is chairman of the CFDA, told WWD about the quality of this year’s finalists’ work.
“It was so good. It just gets better and better every year,” he said.