Anderson Cooper To Host 2011 CFDA Awards

by Justin Fenner | 3:58 pm, May 16th, 2011

Anderson Cooper — that serious journalist guy who barely has time for fashion shows between shimmying into annoyingly small t-shirts and pulling children out of harm’s way — has been asked to face a different kind of battlefield for his most recent assignment: hosting the 2011 Council of Fashion Designers of America awards.

The glitzy gala honoring the year’s best design talent will be held June 6 at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. And Cooper will emcee the whole thing, from Lady Gaga‘s Fashion Icon award to Hilary Alexander‘s Eleanor Lambert award for excellence in fashion journalism. Asking Cooper to host is a surprising choice, but certainly not shocking — Cooper normally does a pretty good job hosting the CNN Heroes awards every year, and he’s pretty stylish as far as talking heads go. But if we said he was a fashion person, well, we’d just be lying.

And maybe that’s why he got picked in the first place — he’s not a fashion person or one of the comedians traditionally tapped for this kind of gig. Last year the award show didn’t have a host, because past hosts like Tracey Ullman and Jeremy Piven didn’t get really warm receptions from the crowd.

Maybe CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg thinks Cooper can break the trend. She seems to have been courting him for this gig for some time now — that would explain why he got a front row seat at her show during New York Fashion Week in September. She said in a press release sent out this morning that Cooper’s “involvement in this year’s gala will lend yet another exciting dimension to fashion’s biggest awards.”

A fourth dimension? Count us in!