The prestigious National Fashion Design Award this year has gone to the Catalan designer Teresa Helbig. The Ministry of Culture and Sport has announced this Tuesday the decision of the jury who highlights the “innovative impulse and artistic quality” of the Catalan.
“We are very excited and very grateful for this award that values ​​30 years of a trade dedicated to craftsmanship, hands, timelessness, our clients and unique looks. With all the enthusiasm and energy in the world to continue building 30 more years (at least)”, explained Teresa Helbig in a press release.
The recognition seeks to honor the long career of the dressmaker as well as the family origins of her brand and her work in training new professionals. “The international relevance achieved by her work, her continuous dialogue with other arts and cultural industries, as well as, especially, her research, updating and incorporation of crafts to the most avant-garde lines of Spanish design, make her a creditor of this prize â€, added the jury in the statement.
Born in Barcelona, ​​Helbig grew up surrounded by haute couture fabrics, in her mother’s workshop. His first steps in fashion were as a window dresser and soon after, after demonstrating his creativity and talent in this art, he was encouraged to design his own collection in 1996. “It all started with a feather, which gave the brand wings,” he explained. the designer in 2016 during an interview for Glamor magazine.
“I had a wedding and I got my mother – who is the head seamstress of my workshop today – into making a feather dress, we sewed them by hand. I think I shouldn’t have done that to the bride! She liked it a lot and a friend told me that I should make a collection”, highlighted the Catalan in the same interview.
As Miquel Iceta’s department has underlined, the National Fashion Design Award -granted annually and endowed with 30,000 euros- “rewards” the “meritorious” work of the winner through a work that, in this creative field, has been made public during 2022 or, “in duly motivated cases, to a complete professional career over time”.
This year the jury has been chaired by the general director of Cultural Industries, Intellectual Property and Cooperation, Carmen Páez Soria, acting as vice president the general deputy director of Promotion of Cultural Industries, Carlo Penna Gómez.
The director of the Costume Museum acted as members. Ethnological Heritage Research Center (CIPE), Helena López de Hierro D’Aubarede; the 2022 National Fashion Design Award, Ãngel Fernández Ovejero; the director of the Master in Design and Creative in Fashion at the University of Vigo, MarÃa Dolores Dopico Aneiros; the cultural critic Enrique Andrés Ruiz; the content manager of Vogue Spain, Inés Lorenzo SarrÃa; the photographer Alfonso Ohnur Espinosa; and the executive director of the Spanish Fashion Creators Association (ACME), Pepa Bueno Fidel.
