Mich Dulce

Mich Dulce takes an idiosyncratic stance on the New Look for Spring/Summer 2014 referencing classic mid-century shapes and styles with playful contemporary twists. Working with T’nalak, a traditional Filipino fabric made of hand-woven banana fibers by the T’boli tribe, each piece is handmade by women from the Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation, a Philippine-based poverty alleviation and nation building movement, with Mich Dulce giving personal skills training and encouraging social for female tribes in impoverished regions. Imbued with this feminine spirit, Mich Dulce’s work demonstrates her commitment to socially conscious entrepreneurship and ethics in fashion, creating a unique design aesthetic with a contemporary humanitarian and ethical message.

This season sees Mich Dulce’s signature style return across a range of pastel shades and gingham checks, prim and proper with all the innocence and niceties of youth. Piped bows and dainty headbands continue this theme alongside Mich’s signature cat ears and clever angular folds, with a collection spanning a wider breadth of details, trims and shapes than ever before. Hairclips are a first for the brand in dainty bow styles, blending classic French style and taste with traditional Filipino craft and construction. With each passing season, as her collections become more comprehensive, continually push the boundaries of what her brand is known for, and surprise with new application of trademark techniques and re-interpretations of the way traditional textiles can be relevant and innovative, Mich Dulce is establishing herself firmly as the milliner to watch right now.

Widely acclaimed as one of the most original and important Filipino visionaries in fashion today, Mich Dulce has won many awards and recognition internationally for her designs as well as her craftsmanship in creating clothes and hats – her most recent being top prize in the 2010 International Young Creative Fashion Entrepreneur at London Fashion Week. She trained at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London College of Fashion, and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Dulce says “It isn’t enough to just make pretty things. The fabric and craft employed in making my hats are an essential part of the heritage of the T’Boli culture, a tapestry of the tribe’s own history and traditions, I want to show this to the world whilst remaining creatively engaging”. Her priority is her advocacy for promoting Filipino craftsmanship and creativity through her ready to wear millinery collections using a traditional Filipino material that can be sold worldwide.