David Cameron Coast
Perry Ellis Award, 1986

This one, we must say, is a bit of a mystery. The first designer ever to receive the Perry Ellis Award (now called the Swarovski Award), Coast’s rise as a wunderkind designer and fall as a financial failure is one for the books. After opening up shop under the moniker David Cameron on February 11, 1985, he was forced to file for Chapter 11 just 35 months later on January 8 of 1988. While most of the names on the CFDA’s past winners’ list are quite recognizable, Cameron, who was just 27-years-old at the time, seems to have disappeared from fashion altogether. We’d love to know what he’s doing.