Ashlynn Park of Ashlyn has captured the 2025 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. The award delivers capital, mentorship, and institutional affirmation at a pivotal point for her label.
Ashlynn Park has been named the winner of the 2025 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. The announcement was made at a dinner hosted at the Crane Club in New York City by Isha Ambani, Zac Posen, Anna Wintour, and Chloé Malle.
Park will receive a $300,000 cash prize along with mentorship support designed to amplify her label’s footprint; the runners-up — Julian Louie of Aubero and Stephanie Suberville of Heirlome — each receive $100,000 and equivalent mentorship packages.
Park champions zero-waste garment construction and small-batch production that minimizes excess. Her collections are made in New York using natural and upcycled fabrics such as silk jersey, organic cotton sateen, and regenerated wool, with each pattern engineered to use every inch of material. Park has said her goal is to “respect time, people, and the environment.” Park challenges the industry’s pace of overproduction while redefining what modern luxury looks like by merging couture-level craftsmanship with sustainable methodology.
Park’s ascent into this role was neither sudden nor accidental. She launched her label Ashlyn in 2020, after formative years working for luminaries including Yohji Yamamoto, Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, and others.
In her remarks to Vogue, she reflected on her early self-doubt: “I was super lucky because I was doubting myself: I’m not too young, I’m not an emerging designer, and my background is pattern-making.”
The Fund itself, created by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and Vogue, has supported more than 200 designers and distributed over $8 million to date. Forty-two percent of recipients are fully or partially women-owned, and 40 percent are fully or partially minority-owned.
“We just saw Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the winners of our very first CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund back in 2004, triumph with their Loewe debut in Paris,” Wintour said. “There are such world-class talents working in America, and I am just as excited and optimistic about how far this year’s finalists will go.”
CFDA CEO Steven Kolb noted that the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund is about giving emerging designers the support they need to build lasting businesses. “This year’s winners reflect the purpose of the fund — to ensure American fashion continues to grow, evolve, and lead with creativity.”
With this prize, Ashlyn gains both capital and institutional recognition. The mentorship component will connect Park with seasoned industry leaders who can help her navigate the next stage of brand growth — from scaling operations to expanding retail reach.
The timing is also significant: Park clinched the CFDA’s Emerging Designer of the Year Award only a week prior, reinforcing the momentum behind her label.
Park’s ethos centers on tailored ease and sustainable practices. “I always start a new season with a lot of writing,” she told Elle. “I’m just pouring my idea into the sentence, and then wording, and then finding a message that I want to deliver to the audience because I really believe the product’s need to convey the emotion and feeling together.”
The ten finalists this year span a wide range of identities and disciplines: menswear, accessories, and womenswear labels. The selection underscores the Fund’s aim to foster a more inclusive designer ecosystem, as evidenced by data showing broad representation among past winners.
For Park, the win is both a validation and a platform: validation of her engineered approach, and a platform from which the label can shift from promising to prominent.
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