Dutch Design Awards honours the best Dutch design of the preceding year. We do this in eight categories, each with its own professional jury. Who is in the jury and who is going to judge your work? And who is their representative in the main jury? In the coming weeks, we will announce the faces behind each category. We kick off with Fashion!
Main Jury
Iris Ruisch
Iris Ruisch graduated from ArtEZ in 1998 as a fashion designer. After graduating, she worked for various fashion houses and brands, and after a long period as Head of Design, she wanted to do something different. Within HTNK she worked as Sr Consultant Design, Management & Talent Scout. In 2015, she became Creative Director of Amsterdam Fashion Week, building the platform into a high-end fashion event. Scaling up the opportunities for talent development and their internationalisation meant the move to a new adventure: since 2018 she has been working as the director of Stichting M-ODE.
Expert Panel
Rachid Naas
Rachid Naas was born in Maastricht and now lives in Rotterdam. He has been working in the cultural sector, specifically fashion and photography, for 21 years and has worked for clients such as Calvin Klein, Nike, Bijenkorf, Vlisco, Zara and Vogue. He is co-founder of Dutch Fashion Council and Fashion House Maastricht, among others. Because of his independent position in the cultural and commercial industry, Rachid is better able to view and question the status quo from a distance.
Mehtap Gungormez
Mehtap Gungormez started observing fashion as a cultural phenomenon during her BA Cultural Studies at the Erasmus University and at the MA-programma Fashion Curation at ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem. After her studies, she worked as fashion and style journalist at Elsevier STIJL and later on for titles such as Vogue, FD Persoonlijk and as menswear editor and trend forecaster for Textilia. Nowadays she is still a journalist for magazines like ELLE Decoration and a men’s fashion trend forecaster for Textilia. For Mehtap, fashion is about more than only clothes: it’s the field where sociology, politics, economics and anthropology meet.
Branko Popovic
Branko Popovic was born in former Yugoslavia (Croatia) in 1983, due to war he and his family immigrated to the Netherlands. Eventually settled in Maastricht, where he also completed fashion design course at Maastricht Academy of Arts (2005). Branko is mostly known as one of the co-founders/directors of FASHIONCLASH Foundation, an interdisciplinary showcase and development platform for fashion and fashion culture and a worldwide network of emerging fashion makers. Besides, he had his own multidisciplinary studio for a period of ten years focusing on men’s fashion and costume design. He was a member of the advisory committee at Creative Industries Fund NL (2017 – 2020). In addition, he reports about art and culture on his blog and for various online magazines.
Martijn van Strien
Martijn van Strien graduated in textile design and forecasting from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2012. After that, he spent two years working in fabric sourcing and production management at the sustainable fashion label Honest by. in Antwerp, five years as a yarn expert at the TextielLab in Tilburg, and the last eight years as a consultant for innovative brands and projects in the textile and fashion world. In his own studio, Martijn uses modern technologies to translate innovative ideas into the world of fashion. By testing radically different approaches to clothing design, production and consumption, he changes perceptions and opens up possibilities for a more sustainable industry.