This week, the Council of Fashion Designers of Americas (CFDA) announced the nominees for this year’s Fashion Awards, the annual “Oscars of fashion” that toasts the industry’s greatest creatives. Originally slated for June 8, the extravagant ceremony had been postponed due to Covid-19, but leadership decided the show must go on: “In this time of unprecedented challenge and change for our industry,” writes Tom Ford, CFDA chairman, “we feel very strongly that it’s important to recognize the nominees representing the best of fashion creativity.” CFDA will announce the winners in September.

This year’s nominees, however, feel a bit too familiar. Ford, the recently elected chairman who received the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 (along with six other CFDA Awards), is up for both Menswear and Womenswear Designer of the Year. Thom Browne, up for Menswear Designer of the Year, has been nominated every year since 2013, winning three times. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen for The Row, up for Accessories Designer of the Year, have already won three times. Fresh-faced talents like Telfar Clemens, Kerby-Jean Raymond for Pyer Moss, and Peter Do help balance the equation.

Vanessa Friedman, chief fashion critic for the New York Times, was quick to point out that the nominees are “almost exactly the same designers who have been nominated in years past,” which only serves to perpetuate a system that has come under fire for its wastefulness and systemic racism. “For anyone thinking that the fashion industry is rife with cronyism, entrenched gatekeepers reluctant to give up power and a deep investment in maintaining the velvet-roped-off status quo, this list of nominees gives substance to the allegations,” she continues. And while we’re thrilled to see the industry coming together during this unprecedented time, we can’t help but agree.

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Designers have long been finding sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. This theory forms the basis for “Learning from Nature: The Future of Design,” an exhibition that the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) developed with the Biomimicry Institute. Though the exhibition, which opened on March 3, is no longer viewable in-person due to the coronavirus, MODA tapped Matterport to create a realistic 3D rendition of the gallery that users can explore virtually.

Examples of biomimetic design abound, including Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train, which eliminates wind resistance by mimicking a kingfisher’s bill, and WhalePower’s wind turbines, which are 30 percent more efficient because they’re shaped like the fin of a humpback whale. Explore these alongside Requiem, the musician Steve Norton’s sound installation that combines archival noises of birds and frogs thought to be extinct.

Andrew Hays’ path to kitchen design is as dynamic as the materiality and finishing techniques that his brand, Cabbonet, is known for. Though he graduated with a degree in architecture, Hays was initially drawn to live performance, establishing a multidisciplinary studio and designing sets and costumes for some of the world’s most renowned opera houses: Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy, Rome’s Arena di Verona, the Royal Opera House in London, and the Sydney Opera House.

After a spell as the creative and brand director of luxury kitchen design house Smallbone, Hays co-founded the acclaimed British studio Arteim with Kimm Kovac. Melding design, architecture, and performance art, the multifarious practice holistically co-exists at the cross-section of the interiors and theater worlds. It’s also the creative machine behind Cabbonet, the lifestyle brand Hays launched in 2019 that is the ultimate expression of his lifelong cross-disciplinary interests.

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