Association: Soineko

The Soineko association was established in 2005 to preserve, enhance, promote and spread the unique and distinctive event of the Paper Dress Contest of the town of Güeñes in Vizcaya, which takes place every second weekend of September since year 1958.

During this long history, the competition has experienced some ups and downs in terms of participants in the Contest highlighting the decade of the 90s of last century as the most important period in decrease of the number of participants.

Following our constitution/origin and thanks to the help given by two public organizations such as the Townhall of Güeñes and Enkartur with whom we cooperate closely, the Paper Dress Contest has been relaunched and has acquired a high level of participation. This participation is not only local but comes from other state communities and even from abroad. Many students of Fine Arts, Design, Dressmaking have taken part in our Paper Dress Contests as a gateway to spread their stylish proposals and name of their colleges (UPV, Norway, Madrid ...)

Several top designers have also collaborated in our event, such as Ion Fiz, Mercedes de Miguel, Maria Clé, Javier Barroeta, Antonio Alvarado, Alicia Rueda, Miriam Ocariz, the Antxia brothers, Roberto Comas (one of our awards is named after him), who not only have they helped us as Juries of the Contest but some of them have also designed some Paper dresses for our collection.

Today the illusion that we had and shared in 2005 has been strongly rewarded and our contest grows every year. In fact, for the 2016 edition it is already taken into account expanding the stage and seating in an effort to contribute to the increasing demand of seats seen in the last contests.

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​This year 2017 the participation of 67 designs to overflowed all expectations of the Association and the great quality of dresses both in children's and adults has been spectacular.