Domitilla Biondi, Marta Benet Morera, Lucia Massei and Elham M. Aghili are the four winners of the third edition of the LVMH Maestri d’Eccellenza (Masters of Excellence) awards. The award ceremony was held on the 39th floor of the skyscraper home to the regional administration of Lombardy in Milan, on the opening day of Milan Fashion Week.

“LVMH is confirming its commitment to protecting and promoting artisanal expertise and craftsmanship. This mission is central to our project. The award is a springboard for Italian artisans, who passionately defend their craft every day, making a fundamental contribution to the Italian fashion industry,” said Maud Alvarez-Pereyre, head of HR at LVMH.

The ‘Master Artisan of Excellence’ award went to Domitilla Biondi, who stepped away from a career in visual communication and digital design in 2013 to follow her passion. Since 2016, Biondi has dedicated herself full-time to paper poetry, her own innovative artistic technique, carving bas-reliefs on paper or porcelain with a surgical scalpel, a combination of meditation and craftsmanship in action.

Marta Benet Morera has been recognised with the ‘Emerging Master Artisan of Excellence’ award. Benet Morera is an artisan and multidisciplinary artist whose work combines ceramics and textiles, blending traditional techniques and natural materials to create idealised shapes. Her practice celebrates imperfection as beauty and embraces sustainability, paying close attention to contemporary influences and aesthetic research.

Lucia Massei won the ‘Master for Excellence in Innovation’ award. She chiefly works with precious metals, pigments and silk, mostly employing traditional techniques. She trained as a jewellery artisan as well as studying painting at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts.

“Italian fashion is rooted in the Renaissance bottega, [a mix of artisanal workshop and store]. This award is concrete proof of the vitality of artisanal craftsmanship, and of how excellence and uniqueness are values that are highly regarded by the new generations too. We must work harder and harder to bring younger people closer to the power of craftsmanship, to make them understand what craftsmanship is, and why its unique worth must be preserved and handed down to future generations,” said Carlo Capasa, president of CNMI.

The Masters of Excellence jury, chaired this year by film director Ferzan Özpetek, decided to recognise with a special mention Elham M. Aghili, an Italian-Iranian artist whose work blends art, fashion and design. She uses an artisanal technique she has developed herself to weave together yarns recovered from offcuts and the residual stock of yarn manufacturers. Inspired by Persian culture and oneiric gardens, she creates installations and wearable sculptures that mix natural iconography with her own hybrid culture.

“Art and craftsmanship very much come together also in my most recent film, Diamonds. Tailoring is the main example of hand-made artisanal craftsmanship. My congratulations to all the winners and participants in this edition of the award,” said Özpetek.

Each winner will receive a cash prize of €10,000 to be reinvested in their business, and will be offered a mentoring period of up to one year with the staff of Thélios, the LVMH company sponsoring this year’s edition of the award, in which over 350 artisans took part. Thélios will also invite the winners to visit its factories to study the manufacturing process and the know-how of its artisans and technicians.

At the end of the award ceremony, Bulgari was announced as the partner of the award’s fourth edition, to be held in 2026.