Draft:Jef Montes

Jef Montes (born in 1987) is a Dutch fashion designer of Spanish descent. Montes founded his haute couture brand in 2012. He is specialized in creating signature yarns and textiles. The designer works closely with TextielLab Tilburg, where he collaborates with product developers in order to design innovative woven and knitted materials. Montes has shown his work at Fashion Scout London, where he was awarded with the Ones To Watch showcase. In 2022 he won 1st prize at the BIAAF award in Bilbao.

Biography
In 2012 Montes graduated with honors degree at fashion design ArtEZ institute of the arts Arnhem. The eponymous label was founded in order to focus on developing the Montes signature. Creating fiberglass materials at his studio resulted into experimental haute couture. Collection Illuminosa debuted at Amsterdam Fashion Week 2014. With support from Creative Industries Fund NL Montes started creating research and development projects. The goal was to learn more about industrial textile producing machines. Projects Velero and Tormenta were developed in collaboration with TextielLab Tilburg. Creating woven fabrics that have a luxurious appeal by using upcycled ocean clean up materials. In 2018 Tormenta was selected for category fashion at the 33rd Villa Noailles Hyères festival international. The collection was based on the fishing-line that his grandfather used working as fisherman in the south of Spain. The idea of creating filaments became clear and motivated Montes to found Adaptive Skins, a textile architecture studio focused on innovation production development. This direction led towards international partnerships via EU Horizon and COSME tech hubs. Interdisciplinary teams produced signature filaments and zero waste 3D knitted patterns. In 2022 project Marinero was awarded BIAAF grand prize, category A – fashion @ the 8th edition of Bilbao international art and fashion.