Pinay designer wins UK fashion award

LONDON – From a tropical country where few people wear hats, a Filipino fashion designer and milliner, actress and musician has won the British Council’s Young Fashion Entrepreneur (YFE) Award for 2010.

Mich Dulce bested 10 competitors from Bangladesh, India, Libya, Lithuania, Russia, Sri Lanka, Syria and Turkey to become the first Filipino to be honored with the prize.

Judges and the public raved not only about her designs, but about her use of indigenous materials, including sinamay and abaca, the latter a material the British associate with rope, said Leslie Stokes, chairman of the British Council Philippines, which sponsored the local search for the YFE.

The YFE is part of the International Young Creative Entrepreneur (IYCE) awards scheme that includes other sectors from the creative industries like publishing, design, visual arts, and screen (film and TV), communications and interactive.

Dulce’s fashion business, which started out on eccentric frocks and dresses, has now expanded to hats, headpieces, corsetry and bridal wear. Her unique style has been featured on “Young Asian Fashion Designers” published by Daab Publishing in Germany.

In 2007 she was handpicked by no less than Terry Jones, editor-in-chief of i-D magazine as one of 10 winners in Showstudio.com’s PSP AMAZE ME contest in London.

Along with her title, Mich gets a £5,000 grant for a collaborative project with the British Council.

Mich Dulce dabbles in many fields apart from fashion. On television, she has appeared in the sitcom John en Shirley starring Dolphy and Maricel Soriano (2006); the short-lived teleserye, The Wedding (2009), and was a housemate in the celebrity edition of Pinoy Big Brother (2006).

On the music front, she was the vocalist of post-riot grrl band Death By Tampon and currently vocalist of indie pop’s burgeoning powerhouse Us-2, Evil-0.         

Educated at Central Saint Martins and London School of Fashion in the UK as well as the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, she interned with designer Cecile Zamora and with fashion forward designers such as Marjan Pejoski, Jessica Ogden and Susan Cianciolo.