The 2025 GQ Fashion Awards: The Best Trends, Shows, and Designers of the Year

Julian Klausner’s debut for Dries Van Noten in June had none of the high–budget whizbang that’s par for the course at Paris Fashion Week. There was an almost serene chillness in the air as guests took their seats under bright skylights in a raw concrete hangar. And then: fireworks. Van Noten was a master of the goosebump-raising runway show, where every element of the production—the lighting, the set, the cast, the soundtrack, and especially the clothes—harmonized in a crescendo of emotion. It turns out that his protégé and successor was taking notes. All Klausner needed was a collection of brightly colored, messily-formal garments and a pitch-perfect soundtrack of Lou Reed demos and remixes to deliver an instant classic debut. Reed’s “Perfect Day” has provided the rhythm to many runway shows over the years, but never has it been deployed to such memorable effect; when the chorus dropped just as the pack of floral-clad models charged out for the finale, the crowd hooted and whistled as if the late Velvet Underground singer himself had just taken the stage. —S.H.

Designer of the Year

Haider Ackermann for Tom Ford

On a beautiful evening in July, Haider Ackermann is sitting on the roof of his Tom Ford design studio in Paris. It’s golden hour on one of the longest days of the year, i.e., well past quitting time, yet the office is still frantic with activity. When I note the hour, the designer responds with a wistful sigh. “When you have a new love affair, you just want to go for it,” he says. “You don’t count the hours. You’re not tired, because you just have this love going through your veins. It makes your heart beat and it keeps you up at night.”

The Colombian-born French designer was named creative director of Tom Ford in the fall of 2024, and the relationship had aroused all of men’s fashion. In fact, Ackermann’s March debut suggested that he might be the most seductive designer working today. In a small auditorium just off Place Vendôme, guests entered the dimly lit confines of a make-believe private room somewhere between the Studio 54 that Mr. Ford (as Ackermann invariably refers to him) used to frequent and the hedonistic clubs of Ackermann’s Antwerp youth. Once the preshow martinis were polished off, models skulked around the room in clothes that had a titillating, intimate edge. There were ’80s banker-pinstripe suits cut with long, languid trousers; silk robes and playful pops of color; a tuxedo shirt unbuttoned to the tank top underneath.

To read more about GQ’s designer of the year, click below.

Store of the Year

Ven. Space

Brian Kanagaki