Speakers and Award Recipients

Sarah Davis will speak on Wednesday, May 22, at the 10 am ceremony. Davis is the founder and president of Fashionphile. She was named one of Forbes’s “Ten Female Entrepreneurs to Watch,” and Entrepreneur called Fashionphile one of the 100 “Smartest, Most Innovative, Hands Down Brilliant Companies on Our Radar.” Fashionphile was bootstrapped from 1999 until 2019, when Neiman Marcus joined as their first investor. Fashionphile is the largest online resale platform for ultra-luxury handbags and accessories. In 2023, Fashionphile became a certified B Corporation.

Davis graduated from Brigham Young University and has a juris doctor from the University of Maryland School of Law. She enjoys cycling, good books, and exploring new places with her husband and four kids.

Millard “Mickey” Drexler will speak on Wednesday, May 22, at the 1:15 pm and 4:30 pm ceremonies. Drexler is the chairman of Alex Mill, the New York-based women’s and men’s fashion brand founded in 2013 by Drexler’s son, Alex. Alex Mill launched with just one perfect men’s shirt that became a cult favorite. Today, the label has evolved into a tightly edited collection of wardrobe essentials and is available online, at select retailers, and in Alex Mill’s two New York City–based shops.

Previously, Drexler served as chairman and CEO of J.Crew Group, where he grew the label into a leading specialty fashion brand and founded its offshoot, Madewell. Prior to that, he spent 18 years at Gap Inc. While there, he founded Old Navy, named after a bar he saw on Boulevard St. Germain in Paris, and launched Gap Kids. Drexler served as a director and investor in Warby Parker until 2020 and was a director of Apple Inc. from 1999 to 2015. 

Drexler will receive a President’s Award.

Internationally renowned designer, artist, and FIT alumna Rebecca Moses will speak on Thursday, May 23, at the 10 am ceremony. Moses criss-crosses a number of creative spheres. She was one of the first American designers to enter the European market in the early 1990s, after closing her namesake label in the U.S. and succeeding Gianni Versace as the creative director of the Italian ready-to-wear brand Genny. Later, Moses ventured beyond fashion’s borders, becoming creative director at Pineider, where she transformed the old-world Florentine stationer into a luxury lifestyle brand that grabbed international attention with savvy products and chic branding.

In 2010, Moses’s husband passed away from a sudden illness, just months before her first book, A Life of Style, was published. She then moved back to New York for a fresh start and turned to illustration projects as her creative outlet. Her work was published in Vogue Italia, Vogue Japan, Icon, and Marie Claire; and brands such as Kartell, MAC Cosmetics, Saks Fifth Avenue, Fratelli Rossetti, Furla, and Vera Wang sought out Moses to capture and promote their essence through her unique eye and storytelling.

With several exhibitions to date and new books in the works, Moses currently is working on projects that reflect our changing world and empower women to be proud of who they are.

Connecticut-born fashion designer and FIT alumnus B Michael will speak on Thursday, May 23, at the 1:15 pm ceremony. Michael found early design inspiration in his mother’s creativity and grandmother’s keen sense of style. After studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology and working under icons such as Oscar de la Renta, Michael decided to launch his namesake millinery line. In 1999, he debuted his first couture collection.

Over the years, Michael garnered many fans, such as Beyoncé, Lena Horne, Phylicia Rashad, Nancy Wilson, Valerie Simpson, and Brandy. He designed Whitney Houston’s costumes for the 2012 remake of Sparkle and the Joffrey Ballet’s costumes for the world premiere of Alexei Kremnev’s Windy Sand. In 2022, Michael was a special guest on the Turner Classic Movies series Follow the Thread in a segment titled “The Stars and Their Designers.”

A member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), he was awarded the Lighthouse Guild Design Visionary Award in 2016. And in 2019, he became the first Black American luxury fashion designer to dress an Oscar recipient—longtime friend Cicely Tyson. His book about Tyson, Muse: Cicely Tyson and Me—A Relationship Forged in Fashion, was published in early 2024.

Michael will receive the President’s Award for Creative Excellence.

Designer and FIT alumnus Bibhu Mohapatra will speak on Thursday, May 23, at the 4:30 pm ceremony. Mohapatra was born in Odisha, India, where his mother instilled in him deep appreciation for handwork, textiles, and making functional clothing that is symbolically powerful. After moving to the U.S. in 1996, he worked as a designer for Halston and then as design director for J. Mendel.

In 2008, after years of working in other houses, Mohapatra rented what he called “a thinking box” on West 73rd Street and Broadway in New York. Painting the walls white and filling the shelves with old and new books, he laid the foundation of his eponymous label. After just a few years, his signature dresses and sharply cut jackets were being worn by the likes of Lupita Nyong’o, Gwyneth Paltrow, and former first lady Michelle Obama.

Mohapatra has garnered awards and recognition from Ecco Domani, the National Arts Club, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. In 2016, he launched his first fine jewelry collection, Artemis, in collaboration with De Beers Forevermark. And in 2021, he opened his first flagship store in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood. 

On Tuesday, May 21, at 6 pm, Laura Mina will speak to the master's graduates of the School of Graduate Studies. Mina serves as the conservator of textiles with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Prior to joining NMAAHC, she served as head of the Textile Conservation Lab with Winterthur Museum and was an affiliated assistant professor of the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in art conservation. Previous institutions include the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Mina received her MA in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice with a conservation focus from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her undergraduate BS is in performance studies from Northwestern University. She is endlessly fascinated by the human capacity for creative self-expression and self-exploration through clothing. Her research interests include conservation ethics, the cultural contexts of textiles, and the chemistry of textile cleaning.