Marie Adam-Leenaerdt
Dear Shaded Viewers,
The gardens of the Palais-Royal, usually a hushed pocket of striped columns and clipped hedges, turned into the beating heart of French fashion last night as the 2026 ANDAM Fashion Awards handed out its verdict on the industry’s next generation. Thirty-one jury members, eleven finalists, one €700,000 endowment — and, for the first time, a jury chaired not by an institution but by one of its own former winners.
Thirteen years after he took home the ANDAM Grand Prize at the launch of AMI Paris, Alexandre Mattiussi returned to the other side of the table, this time as jury president and personal mentor to whoever would claim the top prize. It was a full-circle moment the ANDAM camp had been building toward all year, and by the time the trophies — star-shaped crystal pieces from Swarovski, designed by Mattiussi himself — were handed out beneath the Palais-Royal’s arcades, the emotion in the garden was impossible to miss.
The Grand Prize, and its €300,000 purse, went to Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt, a La Cambre Mode(s) graduate who cut her teeth at Givenchy and Balenciaga before launching her own label in 2023. She joined the Paris calendar the same year and had already been an ANDAM finalist once before, in 2024 — making last night’s win feel less like a lucky break and more like the payoff of a long, deliberate climb.
Visibly moved as she accepted the award, Adam-Leenaerdt called it the first day of the rest of her life. She told press she plans to put the money toward growing her team — particularly on the sales and wholesale side — along with production and a design assistant, the unglamorous but essential machinery behind a growing house.
Mattiussi, who will now mentor her for the coming year on both creative and business strategy, didn’t hold back his praise, saying her work proves that creativity, intelligence, passion, and a genuinely contemporary vision are still shaping fashion’s future. She beat out a formidable shortlist that included EgonLab, Fidan Novruzova, and Zomer — proof of just how competitive this 37th edition turned out to be.
Taking home the Special Prize and its €100,000 award was London-based French designer Pauline Dujancourt, whose knitwear-driven womenswear label launched in 2022 and has built a reputation on intricate, hand-worked textures — evident in the lace-and-floret gowns that walked her runway this season.
Mattiussi singled out her work for a different reason entirely, framing it as a rebuke to fashion’s growing reliance on artificial intelligence and algorithmic marketing: for him, her pieces are a reminder that nothing replaces a designer’s own sensitivity and vision. Dujancourt, for her part, is already looking outward — she told press she wants to travel to Peru to train with local knitters and document the process on film, a sign that her win is fueling ambitions well beyond Paris.
The Grand Prize and Special Prize were only the headline acts. Three more prizes rounded out a night that spanned knitwear, accessories, and hard tech:
- Anthony Calydon — a self-taught Parisian designer who only launched his eponymous knitwear label last year — won the Pierre Bergé Prize (€100,000), earning a year of mentorship from Frédéric Maus, CEO of WSN, focused on structuring his business for safe, sustained international growth.
- Phileo took the Accessories Prize (€100,000), with Lacoste’s Creative Director Pelagia Kolotouros signing on as mentor. She praised the brand’s distinctive point of view, calling its pieces thoughtfully crafted and unmistakably its own.
- Alphalyr, an AI-powered data analytics platform for fashion supply chains, retail, and ecommerce, claimed the Fashion Innovation Prize (€100,000), selected weeks earlier by an expert committee at IFM Paris. A special innovation prize also went to Pili, a startup using microbial fermentation and green chemistry to replace petrochemical dyes with bio-based alternatives — including a bio-indigo pulled straight from renewable resources.
Money aside, what makes ANDAM’s win worth more than most is the machinery that kicks in the moment the trophy is handed over. Instagram is offering the winners direct mentoring from its VP of Fashion Partnerships, Eva Chen. The Galeries Lafayette buying team will sit down with each designer to sharpen collection planning and merchandising. Karla Otto is opening up its communications playbook, OTB is offering a sustainability consultation tailored to each brand, and WSN and Première Classe are promising a dedicated spotlight during Paris Fashion Week. Even the finishing touches are covered — Les Teintures de France will produce a piece for each winner using its dye expertise.
It’s a reminder of what ANDAM, founded in 1989 by Nathalie Dufour, has quietly become over 37 years: not a one-off cash prize, but a genuine on-ramp into the machinery of French luxury, backed by heavyweights including Chanel, Hermès, LVMH, Kering, Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga.
France’s Minister of Culture, Catherine Pégard, framed the night in national terms, describing French fashion as a source of pride and an instrument of both creative and economic influence. ANDAM’s president, Guillaume Houzé, leaned into the symbolism of Mattiussi’s return — a former laureate now writing the next chapter for the designers who’ll follow him.
As the last trophies caught the light under the Palais-Royal’s arcades, the message from this 37th edition was clear: Paris still knows how to make new stars — and it’s willing to fund, mentor, and champion them all the way there.
Winners: Marie Adam-Leenaerdt (Grand Prize), Pauline Dujancourt (Special Prize), Anthony Calydon (Pierre Bergé Prize), Phileo (Accessories Prize), Alphalyr (Innovation Prize), Pili (Innovation Special Prize).
Later,
Diane
