On Friday, September 11, 2026, more than 300 of the fashion industry’s brightest stars and most influential voices gathered at the iconic Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center for the 13th annual Fashion Media Awards. Hosted by Matteo Lane, the night honored the people who make the fashion industry great and ensure that it continues to thrive even in the most uncertain of times.
Matteo Lane (Caroline Fiss for The Daily Front Row)
As presenters and honorees took to the stage, they shared personal anecdotes, wise words, and tremendous gratitude for the people and industry that has given them a home and which they, in tern, have enriched so deeply.
Here are some of our favorite quotes from the night:
“If we scratched the surface, I’m sure we would find the struggles of Stellene — what a great movie title that would be: The Struggles of Stellene — the headaches, the setbacks, but as it is, all we see are the dinner parties, the jewelry, the celebrities. It’s like watching Fred Astaire. You never realize how hard he works, you see him floating, effortless, elegant. Stellene is the Fred Astaire of the media world. We somehow know there are innumerate details, a huge, great effort made, but we don’t see it, we only see the brilliance.”
Isaac Mizrahi and Stellene Volandes (Caroline Fiss for The Daily Front Row)
“The secret is loving it, believing in it, and thinking that it matters. Everything that you do matters. I’m lucky that I have an entire team that loves it and that also believes in it. That’s the secret.”
“I knew nothing about her, but I was immediately struck by her grace and beauty. We quickly organized a beauty story for her. I renmber staring at the screen on set tand thinking “this is like watching a ballerina do her first dance.”
Kai Schreiber and Stephen Gan (Caroline Fiss for The Daily Front Row)
“[It] is surreal and wouldn’t be possible if not for all my sisters who paved the way for me in this industry, and I carry them with me into every room.”
“Self-expression through fashion is a practice, a daily way of being, open to all of us. But it is always a doing, never a done. As soon as we name and define the finished self, the identity, we have identified our boundaries. To say ‘This is what I am’ implies ‘this is all that I am.’ So even the most freeing of identities is also a box. I used to think we all just needed a bigger box. I am coming to believe we don’t need the box at all. It may help us know each other, but it doesn’t help us know ourselves.”
Evan Rachel Wood, Jordan Roth, Jenna Lyons (Caroline Fiss for The Daily Front Row)
“I’ve been fortunate throughout my whole career to work with extraordinary talent. You learn pretty quickly that there are certain people who just have it-that magic, that presence. You recognize it Within seconds, wisdom as it-that is what makes him a trailblazer.”
Wisdom Kaye and Zac Posen (Caroline Fiss for The Daily Front Row)
“When I was eight years old, I wanted to be a firefighter. When I was 10 years old, I wanted to be the youngest person ever to climb Mount Everest. And when I was 17 years old, I wanted to be a professional soccer player. [None] of those things happen. And I’m 25 now and I don’t even know what I’m doing tonight after this. The one thing I think I’ve always known, though, at all the stages of my life, is that I wanted to create.”
“We spent three years…