Tiffany and CFDA expand jewelry design award with $25,000 scholarship

Tiffany & Co. and the CFDA are widening their jewelry-design prize into something more structurally powerful: a pipeline. The second cycle, announced May 11, adds the Tiffany x CFDA Jewelry Design Scholar Award, a $25,000 scholarship and summer internship for an early-career student, alongside a competition that still rewards finished vision, technical discipline, and the ability to turn an idea into a tightly edited collection.

The design award keeps its emphasis on craft over spectacle. Finalists will develop a 3- to 5-piece collection, work one-on-one with Tiffany’s design team, and take part in a multi-week learning experience centered on craft and material exploration. One winner will receive a $50,000 grant and a one-year paid fellowship on Tiffany’s design team, with the recipient to be announced in early 2027. The final presentation and award ceremony will be held at Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue flagship, The Landmark, placing the conclusion of the program inside one of the house’s most visible stages.

That structure matters because the award is not asking for volume; it is asking for point of view. By limiting finalists to a few pieces, Tiffany and the CFDA are rewarding designers who can distill an idea into proportion, setting, surface, and silhouette. In jewelry, that usually means the difference between a concept sketch and something that lives convincingly in metal and stone, whether a form is held in a bezel, lifted in prongs, or left deliberately minimal so the material itself does the speaking. The program’s language around original vision, respect for tradition, and material exploration suggests a preference for work that feels emotionally legible as well as technically resolved.

The scholarship extends that logic to the beginning of the career arc. Rather than waiting until a designer has already entered the market, the new student award pushes support closer to the point where access can make the biggest difference: tuition, training, and an actual summer inside a luxury house. That is a more durable kind of patronage than a one-off prize, and it aligns with Tiffany Atrium and CFDA Impact, the social-impact platforms both organizations use to frame the initiative.

The inaugural cycle, launched in 2024, brought 10 participants to New York for an immersive orientation and design challenge. Jameel Mohammed, founder of the Afrofuturist brand Khiry, won the first award in January 2025 and received the $50,000 prize plus a one-year paid fellowship beginning in February 2025. He will now sit on the 2026-2027 selection committee, a telling sign that the program wants mentorship to move in both directions, not just from house to candidate.

The committee also includes Rajni Jacques, Nathalie Verdeille, Gabrielle Union, Bethann Hardison, Frank Everett, Karla Martinez de Salas, Andrew Bolton, and Lynn Yaeger. With applications open through June 1, the award is shaping up as a serious bet on jewelry as its own design language, and on the designers who can make it culturally resonant without losing precision.