On my watch, it was 2:49 p.m. at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris when Cate Blanchett announced the news: “I know that I speak on behalf of all in wishing the winner a long and fulfilling career. So, the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designer 2022 goes to… SS Daley! The audience screamed as Steven Stokey Daley, 25, took the stage in his voluminous khaki trench coat from the collection to accept the gold award. As with everything else in the last 48 hours I’ve been here preparing for this moment – except for sleep time – Daley delivered his speech with aplomb. “It’s like an Oscar, so thank you Cate! I really didn’t expect to win, so thank you to everyone who supported me. In a brief speech (as brief as the then unknown winner was asked to deliver during rehearsals the day before), he checked the name vogues Sarah Mower and Harry Lambert then added, letting out a second laugh: “and my boyfriend, who had no choice.”

Only 90 minutes later, that crowd had all but evaporated. Certainly the list of judges for the LVMH Prize of the Year, including artistic directors Nigo (Kenzo), Silvia Venturini Fendi, Kim Jones (Dior Men and Fendi), Nicolas Ghesquière (Louis Vuitton), Jonathan Anderson (Loewe), Maria Grazia Chiuri (Christian Dior), and Stella McCartney CBE were scattered to the winds. The only evidence of critical mass at 2:49 p.m. was a few prowlers and reporters hunched over their laptops. Behind the scenes, in the small area where he and his seven other LVMH Prize finalists had spent the last two days in close and intense creative closeness – a closeness that, at the time, would engender competition, but which has proven not – Stokey Daley has finally finished his final victory interview on Zoom. Alongside choiceless beaming boyfriend Leo Meredith, Daley said: “I think this whole experience is just very surreal. And it’s only starting to sink in now, actually. The last few hours have been a little blurry, but overall? It was life changing.

The truth is that each of today’s finalists would have made a worthy winner of the 9th edition of the LVMH Prize, which, in addition to this whimsical prize, comes with €300,000 in cash and the priceless one-year bonus mentorship from LVMH. ERL’s Eli Russell Linnetz and Winnie New York’s Idris Balogun, who shared this year’s Karl Lagerfeld Prize together (and each pocketed €150,000), were clear contenders. Speaking ahead of the award, judge Maria Grazia Chiuri called London’s Idiwe Tokyo James someone who had impressed her, while fellow judge Sidney Toledano, chairman and chief executive of LVMH Fashion Group, cited Hiroshima-born Ryunosuke Okazaki of Ryunosukeokazaki as another strong prospect. He added: “With each of the candidates frankly it was worth chatting with, even nice little companies, just to find out how the baby still in the egg feels, just out of the egg…because that for us it gives signals.” Dubliner Róisín Pierce, New Jersey resident Ashlyn and Londoners KNWLS – whom Alexandre Arsenault said he and co-founder Charlotte Knowles blamed themselves for rushing their presentation to the judging panel out of whack – were also highly accomplished.