Tiffany & Co. x CFDA Jewelry Designer Award Names Five Finalists

Tiffany & Co. and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) have announced the five finalists who will compete in the second cycle of the Tiffany & Co. x CFDA Jewelry Designer Award. The list, announced on November 10, 2026, includes Angelo Jones, Aaron Mak, Christine Olowonira, Haley Kim and Ivi Kyratzi. The finalists will work with Tiffany’s design team over the coming months, and the winner will be announced in spring 2027.

The winning designer will receive a $50,000 grant and a one-year paid fellowship in Tiffany’s design department. The CFDA shared the announcement on its official Instagram account with a photo of the finalists posing together.

See the CFDA's finalist announcement on Instagram

How the program works

As reported by WWD and The Impression, the program pairs creative mentorship with a design challenge rooted in Tiffany’s heritage. Each finalist will work one-to-one with Tiffany’s design team to reinterpret the house’s established design codes through their own lens. Along the way, each will also receive a stipend to produce a capsule collection of three to five pieces in metal.

The finished collections will first be presented to a selection committee and then showcased at The Landmark, Tiffany’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York. This means the finalists will have the chance to show their work in one of the world’s best-known jewelry windows even before the winner is named.

The selection committee and the first winner

The selection committee includes Tiffany chief artistic officer Nathalie Verdeille, Sotheby’s jewelry vice chairman Frank Everett, CFDA board member Bethann Hardison, Andrew Bolton of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, actress Gabrielle Union-Wade, writer Lynn Yaeger, Rajni Jacques and Karla Martinez de Salas. Another member of the committee is the award’s first winner, Jameel Mohammed.

Mohammed, the founder of jewelry brand Khiry, was selected from ten participants in the award’s first cycle in 2024, was named the winner in January 2025 and began his fellowship that April. In the first cycle, participants worked with Tiffany’s design team for four months, supported by monthly mentoring sessions, lectures ranging from gemstones to sustainability and brand identity, and visits to the house’s Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop. That cycle’s brief was a five-piece collection bringing Tiffany’s heritage together with a contemporary outlook aimed at Gen Z.

A new scholarship for students

In May of this year, the two organizations added a separate program alongside the award. Called the Jewelry Design Scholar Award, the initiative provides a $25,000 scholarship and a summer internship to an early-career jewelry design student. Both awards are part of Tiffany Atrium, Tiffany’s social impact platform, and the CFDA’s work to support American design talent.

Why it matters

Jewelry design is a far more closed field than ready-to-wear: workshop, material and production costs are the biggest obstacles facing young designers. One-to-one access to a major jewelry house’s design team, a funded capsule collection and an exhibition at the flagship store tackle that obstacle directly. Seen from Turkey, the picture is striking: although we have a strong jewelry tradition stretching from the Grand Bazaar to today’s independent brands, there is not yet a similar mentorship and award program connecting young jewelry designers with major houses. Those who want to step into the fashion world can also take a look at our industry guides.

Sources

Image: Tiffany & Co.’s flagship store The Landmark on Fifth Avenue, New York — ajay_suresh, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

The Instagram posts in this article are official posts by the respective accounts and are published using Instagram’s embed tool; the rights to the images belong to their owners.