Filipina won top UK designer award
Posted on February 25th, 2010
A Filipina fashion designer and milliner, actress and musician, won this year’s British Council’s Young Fashion Entrepreneur (YFE) Award. Mich Dulce wowed the judges, not only because of her designs, but also of her use of indigenous materials, like sinamay and abaca.
YFE is a part of the International Young Creative Entrepreneur (IYCE) awards scheme that includes other sectors from the creative industries, which include publishing, design, visual arts, screen (film and TV), communication and interactive.
Dulce is the first Filipino to win the prize and she competed with 10 designers from Bangladesh, India, Libya, Lithuania, Russia, Sri Lanka, Syria and Turkey. Her prize includes a £5,000 grant for a collaborative project with the British Council.
Started with eccentric frocks and dresses, Dulce’s fashion business expanded to hats, headpieces, corsetry and bridal wear. Because of her unique style, she has already been featured on “Young Asian Fashion Designers” by Daab Publishing in Germany.
International honors are not new to Dulce, because in 2007, she was handpicked by Terry Jones, editor-in-chief of i-D magazine as one of the 10 winners in Showstudio.com’s PSP AMAZE contest in London.
A multi-faceted individual, Dulce dabbles in different forms of arts. She has appeared on TV as one of the housemate in the celebrity edition of Pinoy Big Brother in 2006. On the same year, she also appeared in the John en Shirley sitcom starring Dolphy and Maricel Soriano.
Dulce was also the vocalist of the post-riot girl band Death By Tampon and is currently the vocalist of indie pop’s burgeoning powerhouse Us-2, Evil-0.
She took up formal education at the Central Saint Martins and London School of Fashion in the UK, and also the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She also worked with designer Cecile Zamora, Marjan Pejoski, Jessica Ogden and Susan Cianciolo as their intern.
