Filipina Mich Dulce is a featured designer in the new selection of 2016 Bright New Things offered in the United Kingdom’s iconic store, Selfridges.
Selfridges’ annual Bright Young Things concept is touted as celebrating “the most exciting new names in sustainable fashion.”
Dulce’s designer hats have been worn by female pop icon Lady Gaga, Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester, English fashion model Georgia May Jagger, and Vogue editor Anna Dello Russo.
Milliner Dulce’s hats are now part of the London store’s special collection brandishing fashion wearables which have been created using standards of ethical trade and practice. The Bright New Thing project declares, “Our ambition is to do more with less, reducing our carbon footprint 15% by 2020.”
Dulce, the British Council’s International Young Creative Entrepreneur of the Year 2010, is cited for working with Philippine communities “to create playful hats from sustainable materials.”
“I am so thrilled to be part of this amazing initiative with all these other amazing sustainable designers,” posted the designer on her Instagram account.
Dulce is known to advocate Filipino talent with the use of traditional Filipino materials on her RTW creations. Her earlier charity work with Gawad Kalinga helped her build her network of and T’nalak weavers of the T’boli tribe. “I want consumers to see the value of craft once again and recognise the effort that goes into making these products,” says Dulce of her advocacy.
The Parisian fashion house milliner works with Filipino communities that specialise in working with natural fibres, including banana, pineapple, buri palm leaves and buntal (talipot palm stalks), helping them to sustain their local traditions, crafts and cultures.
Dulce trained at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London College of Fashion, and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She took up Interdisciplinary Studies at the Ateneo de Manila University.
Dulce is one of the 9 sustainable fashion designers recognized by Selfridges.
