Menswear designer Francisco van Benthum has built an impressive legacy by consistently pushing the confines of traditional men’s fashion, be it with his eponymous luxury level label or in collaborations such as HACKED by__ and commissioned corporate fashion design.

Womenswear designers and sisters Truus and Riet Spijkers stood out from the very start of their Spijkers en Spijkers ready-to-wear label with a quirky, playful and graphic handwriting, a skilled fashion sense and an equally strong entrepreneurial spirit.

With her extraordinary inspiration and determination, designer Iris van Herpen has single-handedly introduced her signature design vocabulary and futurist techniques to the global visual language of fashion. A national fashion treasure par excellence.

Joris Suk and Tessa de Boer of MAISON the FAUX are brave scouts in a new era in fashion, forward in their questioning of values and practices embedded in the industry, and fearless in exploring and establishing new roles for designers and affiliated artists.

Danish born designer Claes Iversen has impressed the Dutch fashion arena with his professional agility and deeply developed oeuvre, which unites many apparent contradictions: timeless elegance vs nowness, glamour vs realism, concept vs craftsmanship.

The very first Mode Stipendium was granted to womenswear designer Ilja Visser in support of her couture collection ‘AMBACHT’, an homage to the architecture of the Rijksmuseum, which was undergoing a decade-long renovation at the time.

Jan Taminiau is one of the best-known fashion names from The Netherlands and one of our last true couture houses with none other than Her Majesty Queen Máxima as his most prominent ambassador. A veritable flag bearer for Dutch fashion design.

When Jan Taminiau received the Cultuurfonds Mode Stipendium in 2014 his star had risen to a summit in the wake of King Willem-Alexander’s coronation the year before, for which occasion Jan and his team had delivered the unforgettable royal blue gown and cape for our new queen. Máxima had already been a loyal client and patron since she wore Jan Taminiau’s iconic recycled mailbag jacket to the opening of the Arnhem Mode Biennale in 2009, and she remains so until today. For Jan Taminiau, reaching this level of fame and accolades marked a turning point as new clients from all over the world flocked to his studio and priorities needed to be set. Obeying show calendars was not one of them, delivering true artisanal beauty one exclusive gown at the time was. Jan denounces the essence of fashion, which is harmful in every way, and fervently hopes that the new appreciation for masterful craftsmanship is more than a fashion trend.

Love brought Jan Taminiau to Madrid, where, soon enough, he also found a new clientele, and the necessary highly skilled hands to work with. In 2019 he opened a second couture studio there, and for a while Jan and some of the team travelled back and forth to meet the demands of both ateliers. Ongoing corona measures in The Netherlands ultimately drove him to close his studio in Baambrugge in the summer of 2023.

The multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer Bas Kosters has enriched Dutch fashion with his signature visual language that combines simplicity and poetry, cultural critique and tenderness, social commitment and vulnerability, fashion anarchism and democracy.

The Cultuurfonds Mode Stipendium came as a surprise to Bas Kosters at a moment in his career when he had just set out in a new direction toward a more autonomous practice. The honor and financial incentive were pivotal in aiding him to break away from his routines and spend time on residencies in Tokyo and Los Angeles to focus on excavating his essence as a maker and presenting his work in unfamiliar contexts. Tokyo was an intimate encounter with solitude, which brought him to realize that some truths or visions about one’s own work, might as well be very different, and can be changed into new ideas. Los Angeles was all about erotic art and about a profound sense of not knowing with regards to his own work. Bas learned to keep faith and trust all be be well, and that there are some many ways of working, progressing and processing.

Mohamed Benchellal fell under the spell of the fashion metier at an early age, having spent a lot of time in his Moroccan grandparents’ sewing workshop. Serious about craftsmanship, he took a training at the Mode Lyceum Amsterdam and soon after, in 2015, opened his atelier in Amsterdam. Lacking money, this couturier at heart developed a particular expertise in working with leftover materials, and manages to conjure extravagant, classic-looking yet highly sculptural couture creations from them which he shares in Instagram. Celebrity stylists soon caught on and before he knew it, high profile names like Sharon Stone, Billy Porter, Alicia Keys, Iris Apfel and, in The Netherlands, HRH Queen Máxima wore his creations.

The Arab fashion world also took great interest in his ‘radical elegance’ genius and Benchellal was invited for an extensive artist residency in Qatar. In recent years, it has rained awards such as the Vogue Arabia Fashion Prize in 2020, including a placement on Net-a-Porter, Fashion Trust Arabia’s award for evening wear in 2021 and he won ‘designer of the year’ at the Emigala Fashion Awards in 2022.

The list of royals Benchellal counts as his fans by now includes Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, the former editor-in-chief of Vogue Arabia Her Royal Highness Princess Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz, and last spring Her Majesty Queen Letizia of Spain honoured his talent wearing custom Benchellal during the official state visit to the Netherlands.

Mohamed Benchellal is currently preparing his solo exhibition in the National Museum of Qatar in Doha.

Erik Frenken has been adamant in realizing his position from the beginning of his career. His professional stamina and recognizable progressive urban vision of affordable luxury fashion have established his name in Dutch fashion history and, indeed, around the globe.

The 13th and latest recipient of the Cultuurfonds Mode Stipendium, Camiel Fortgens, started making clothes for his graduation project at the Design Academy in 2014, ‘having no clue whatsoever’. He went on and figured it out, gathered a small team around him, and built a quiet brand with a global following based on that genuine curiosity for the very real everyday clothes we wear.

Camiel Fortgens: “We are surprised and very honoured to be granted this award. It is special to receive acknowledgment in our own country, as our work is mostly known abroad. I felt it was a good thing to embrace imperfection and show the hand of the maker in the garment. Society is filtering out human imperfection. Everything is being polished to perfection. We’re being taught to hide behind dreamlike facades. Imperfection has become almost taboo. I want to oppose that.”

With their knitwear label YOUASME MEASYOU, designer Mark van Vorstenbos and artist Twan Jansen pioneered with crowd funding, community feedback and virtual reality retail, introducing contemporary values such as transparency and inclusivity to fashion.