Sandy Chilewich, Awarded Material ConneXion Medium Award For Textile Design

New York, NY - Sandy Chilewich, entrepreneur and textile innovator, was awarded the prestigious award during the course of MATTERX, Material ConneXion's symposium celebrating ten years of material innovation. The event took place in New York City on May 17 and 18.

Inspired by both traditional and modern manufacturing techniques, Chilewich creates innovative textiles and original designs for modern use. Her award winning products are made entirely in the USA and sold around world. Throughout her career she has taken prosaic items and transformed them into desirable "must haves" and now she has totally transformed the tabletop category. Says Chilewich, "I am always looking for new ways to interpret fabric and create a new function from something familiar."

Sandy Chilewich is a true entrepreneur and a leader in the "business" of design. She has taken the style conscious consumer from legwear to tableware. Both Hue and Chilewich brands have been credited with waking up dormant, commodity driven industries with their innovations in yarn development and design—lifting both categories out of the mundane and repositioning them in the high fashion arena. Hue is credited with revolutionizing the legwear industry. She and her partner ran the company for 14 years before selling it in 1992 when sales were grossing over $40M. Hue is still a thriving brand in the hosiery world today. Now, as her second company, Chilewich reaches its tenth anniversary history looks set to repeat itself. She has won several awards including, Best New Design Award at the 1998 New York International Gift Fair; in 1999 an award from the Industrial Designers Society of America for RayBowls and an ICFF Award for Plynyl at the 2001 International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York.

Sandy Chilewich was nominated by Polly Leonard, Editor of Selvedge magazine, for the Medium award, and was joined by nine other recipients in both receiving this inaugural award, and speaking at MATTERX.

Polly Leonard writes, "Sandy Chilewich stood out as an obvious nominee, enterprising and resourceful she has captured the innovative qualities of a techno fabric without sacrificing the qualities of texture and handle that are fundamental to a textile. I admire her ability to do justice to both requirements—function and beauty. It's a balancing act that seems effortless for Sandy and it made my choice simple too." MATTERX.

Her fellow winners were:

• Kennedy & Violich for Architecture
• David Gibson for Environmental Design>/li>
• Industrial Facility for Industrial Design
• Cao|Perrot Studio for Landscape Design
• Patrick Jouin for Edition Design
• Inigo Manglano-Ovalle for Fine Art
• Franz von Holzhausen for Transportation Design
• DDCLAB for Fashion Design
• Clodagh for Interior Design

SOURCE: Material ConneXion's symposium