Dutch Design Awards 2022

Every year during DDW, DDA awards the best Dutch design of the past year, divided into 8 categories. In addition, the DDA Exhibition displays all winning and nominated designs.

For third year in a raw, I took part in the jury panel of the Fashion category. The winners were announced and celebrated on 27 October at the DDA Award Night during Dutch Design Week 2022 in Eindhoven. 

Together with the jury consting of Rachid Naas, Mehtap Gungormez, Marga Weimans and chairman Iris Ruisch, the three nominees have been decided.
For this year the nominees were Antoine Peters, David Laport and Yamuna Forzani.

David Laport is nominated for the project Local Vegetation.

Local Vegetation is the tenth collection from Studio David Laport, inspired by a photo series depicting local places with unique vegetation in the magazine Atmos. An important objective of this collection was to translate the lushness of vegetation into a material. Laport and his team embraced the limitations presented by the pandemic. For example, the studio used YouTube tutorials to learn the whole process of manual pleating. In addition, the studio also developed the nylon-hyper-fringe material itself. This has enabled Studio David Laport to make its largest couture pieces zero waste, which the studio has since embraced as its vision and policy.

Jury:
David Laport is a very consistent designer with a lot of imagination. Corona delivered setbacks, which the studio managed to shape into a new vision and working method. A beautiful reminder that we often first need failures before we can arrive at truly new and inspiring work. The circumstances forced David Laport to reflect upon his craft and take responsibility for it by giving couture a sustainable twist. Laport’s unmistakeable signature remains firmly established in this zero waste policy. The result is an attractive, stimulating collection that tells a clear story: everyone can and must take the step towards more responsible production, including the more established names.

Yamuna Forzani, The Utopia Ball x Fashion Show was named winner of 2022 fashion category.

Yamuna Forzani is a fashion designer, art director, organiser and member of the current Dutch ballroom scene – a community by and for trans BPOC people and non-binary and queer people of colour. In 2018 she came up with the concept of The Utopia Ball x Fashion Show: a traditional ballroom competition with an added fashion show. The concept has since grown to become an alternative platform that celebrates and strengthens the (fashion) talent of young designers and this community. In 2021, the Utopia Ball was held in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam as part of Rotterdam Pride, co organised with Seven Angels. During this ball there was a fashion show with designs from members of the Dutch and Parisian ballroom communities: Timothy Scholte, Michelle TSM, Augusto Junior and Miidorie.

Jury:
Yamuna Forzani shows how empowering fashion can be: she designs and creates the whole interplay, from a strong collection to cross-disciplinary community events. A ‘third space’, where people who are excluded in many other places are given the space to exhibit their talent and identity, bursting with energy and fun, ever so far away from fashion that dictates what to wear. Utopia Ball celebrates the freedom of a super gender fluid collection; a guiding example of what fashion can and should be nowadays. Forzani designs beyond garments and the classic runway. Form and content are already well balanced, which makes us look forward to her next steps.

Antoine Peters earned his nomination for The Space Garment at Bonnefantenmuseum

Antoine Peters’ creative expressions move between fashion, art and architecture. For twenty years now, Peters has been drawing textile sculptures and installations that are created in dialogue with the space. In the Bonnefanten Museum these Space Garments became a landscape of sleeves and jeans. Visitors were invited to literally walk ‘through’ the clothing, and the space around an item of clothing became just as important as the garment itself. The curious objects have a disruptive effect on the viewer, with which the designer wants to break through the traditional relationship between observer and object, making us see clothing and the world around us differently, both literally and figuratively.

Jury:
Antoine Peters is an incredibly transparent designer who embraces everything and eagerly shares knowledge. It is his high level of involvement that invites a wide audience to experience what fashion can do to you. Peters questions, reflects and experiments in a fun, accessible way and engages tirelessly in conversations with visitors; a successful example pf a participative designer. His modesty and carefulness in dealing with people is typical of the mentality of a new generation of designers, for whom collaboration is a natural starting point. As a fashion designer he has placed Space Garment in a challenging art space like the Bonnefanten Museum to tell a multi-layered story.

Commissioned by FASHIONCLASH Festival, hosted by Bonnefantenmuseum, powered by Creative Fund NL

These are all the winners of Dutch Design Awards 2022

Baby Reni

PRODUCT
REX by Ineke Hans x Circuform

‘REX does away with furniture as disposable items: with great dedication and decisiveness, Ineke Hans and Circuform have created an ecosystem that gives value to exchangeable furniture’

HABITAT
DEPOT BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN | MVRDV

‘Together with Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, MVRDV has designed an iconic building and a new typology for what a museum depot can be’

COMMUNICATION
CAPS LOCK I Ruben Pater

‘With CAPS LOCK, Ruben Pater instantly made a standard piece; in the paperback published by Valiz he clearly and thoroughly deals with the stranglehold in which capitalism confines the design world’

FASHION
THE UTOPIA BALL X FASHION SHOW I YAMUNA FORZANI

‘With Utopia Ball, Yamuna Forzani celebrates the freedom of a super gender fluid collection; a guiding example of what fashion can and should be now’

DESIGN RESEARCH
IABR-DOWN TO EARTH: WATERSCHOOL M4H+ | STUDIO MAKKINK & BEY

‘Waterschool M4H+ stands head and shoulders above the rest: Studio Makkink & Bey presents a textbook example of how design research can play an educational role’

Leo Maher

DATA & INTERACTION
BUYCLOUD I STUDIO NOA JANSMA

‘Buycloud is light-footed and at the same time razor sharp: with one seemingly simple metaphor, Noa Jansma manages to touch upon a whole spectrum of themes, all of which are urgent’

BEST COMMISSIONING
WTFFF!? I FONDS SLACHTOFFERHULP X MORROW (+ HACK THE PLANET + Q42 + JONAS DEVACHT + JOEP LE BLANC)

‘Incredibly clever how Fonds Slachtofferhulp and Morrow’s WTFFF!? opens up a loaded theme within a context and visual language that hit the mark’

YOUNG DESIGNER CREAM ON CHROME (MARTINA HUYNH X JONAS ALTHAUS) ‘For each design, Martina Huynh and Jonas Althaus develop an approach that makes complex ideas and concepts understandable; we will be seeing Cream on Chrome for years to come’

PARTNER AWARDS
Dutch Design Awards is able to present four additional awards this year thanks to collaboration with their partners: Take a look

www.dutchdesignawards.nl