Bilbao, June 14, 2022. The Dutch Jef Montes won the Best Design Award; the Israeli Tal Maslavi received the Best Accessories Award; and the Biscayan Asier Quintana Villa received the Iñaki Azkuna Award for Best Basque Emerging Designer.
La Terminal Building, in the renewed creative area of Zorrozaurre, was the venue for this year’s awards ceremony, which was attended by the Mayor of Bilbao, Juan Maria Aburto; the Provincial Councilor for Economic Promotion of Bizkaia, Ainara Basurko; the Councilor for Economic Development, Commerce and Employment of the City of Bilbao, Xabier Otxandiano, the Councilor of the Youth and Sports Area of the City of Bilbao, Itxaso Erroteta, and the Director of the Youth and Sports Area of the City of Bilbao, Idoia Uriarte, among others.
The winners of the three categories were chosen from among more than 1,300 proposals from promising young designers from 92 different countries who participated in the contest. The international jury was chaired by Javier Alonso Partner of Let’s Grow in Fashion and Lifestyle Business Angel, with representatives of the LVMH group, Vogue and the Balenciaga Museum, as well as leading Spanish fashion designers such as Miriam Ocariz and Mercedes de Miguel, who chose the 30 finalists of the contest in May.
The 30 finalists’ pieces can be seen until June 19 in a unique exhibition at La Terminal Building.
This edition has been characterized by artistic and cultural references such as Pop Art by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the novel ‘1984’ by George Orwell, the film ‘Inception’ by Christopher Nolan, the mobile sculptures of Alexander Calder, Dadaism or Performative Art. The proposals received, in fact, have shown this year that “fashion is above all a means of artistic and creative expression,” stresses the organization.
The 30 finalist collections reflect the concerns and hopes of these young designers, many of them students at prestigious universities and fashion schools around the world (Parsons, FIT, Central Saint Martin’s, London College of Fashion, Shenkar, Kyoto Seika University, KADK, Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp, Polimoda, IED…).
Despite the incredible designs that were finalists in this edition, only three of them were the winners of the three prizes that were awarded that night.
In the accessories category, Tal Maslavi (Israel) from Shenkar College of Engineering and Design won the award for Best Accessory Design. A groundbreaking accessories collection, based on the cynical reality in which we live that seeks to challenge and rethink things in the world, this is how the artist described his work. Inspired by Dadaism, the collection’s accessories try to reflect the cynicism and lack of clarity of the era in which we live.