Fashion Group International will present its 42nd annual Night of Stars gala on 14 October at the Rainbow Room in New York, honouring six figures across fashion, beauty, media and activism under the theme "The Modernist" (WWD).

The Rainbow Room, the Art Deco event space on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, will host the red-carpet evening from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (FGI). Simon G. Jewelry is sponsoring the cocktail reception, with its chief operating officer Brooke Brinkman serving as host.

Wes Gordon, global creative director of Carolina Herrera — the American house founded by the Venezuelan designer and owned by Puig, the Spanish fragrance and fashion group — will receive the Fashion Visionary Award. Gordon has held the top creative post at Carolina Herrera since 2018.

Lucien Pagès, a Paris-based fashion communications leader whose agency handles press for houses including Dries Van Noten and Sacai, will receive the Media Leadership Award. London-based designer Roksanda Ilinčić, known for the colour-driven, architecturally cut womenswear label that bears her first name, will receive the Fashion Star Award.

Jane Hertzmark Hudis, executive vice president and chief brand officer of The Estée Lauder Cos., takes the Beauty Award. Celebrity stylist Micaela Erlanger receives the Style Award in honour of Edith Head, the Hollywood costume designer whose name has been attached to the prize as a legacy reference. Henry R. Munoz 3rd — a designer, activist and philanthropist — receives the Changemaker Award.

The promotional artwork for "The Modernist" was created by Ruben Toledo, the Cuban-American illustrator whose fashion drawings have long been associated with the industry's visual culture.

Fashion Group International, the non-profit professional organisation founded in 1930, runs the Night of Stars as its annual fundraising gala. The group's membership spans executives, entrepreneurs and professionals across every sector of the industry, and its website at fgi.org promotes access to market data, industry sources and a global network of decision-makers (FGI).

The 2025 edition, held under the theme "Artists & Icons," honoured the Dutch designer Iris van Herpen and the broadcaster Kerry O'Brien with the Founders' Award, among others (WWD). The 40th anniversary event in 2024 gave the Fashion Visionary Award to Reed Krakoff, with LaQuan Smith among the other honorees (WWD).

For the 2026 edition, the roster spans a stylist who dresses Hollywood talent for the red carpet, a beauty executive at one of the world's largest cosmetics companies, a London designer with a fine-arts background, and a communications professional who shapes how European houses are written about. That spread is consistent with the Night of Stars' pattern: the gala has never been a single-discipline affair, and the 42nd edition continues to cast its net across the chain of people who make fashion visible — from the design studio to the press release to the red carpet.