Wow. Surely you all sometimes wonder at how fast time goes by? Especially when you’re having fun, or when you’re very, very busy (it’s both cases over here in the EVE offices… maybe a bit more busy, but it’s fun being busy with ITS…). So finding ourselves here, writing about the ITS#NINE T-Shirt and Bag, gives us a funny kind of feeling. Wow. It’s June guys, the finals are a month and a half away. That’s almost no time away. Seems like the April preselections were just yesterday…
Anyways! Better not think about that too much otherwise we start focusing on the AMOUNT OF WORK ahead, and get frightened…Wow, so much work ahead… Ehm, what were we talking about?? Yes!!! The ITS#NINE T-Shirt and Bag is ready! Super limited edition, to be worn and used by all our guests!! A brief history is necessary for those of you who have no clue about what we’re talking about…Since the first edition ITS#ONE, we have been producing together with DIESEL a commemorative t-shirt for the event to be distributed to all guests and finalists. The ITS bag is part of this process, it has the same kind of graphics and is filled with gadgets from our partners and sponsors (that’s why it’s also called “the goodie bag”…) as well as a copy of the ITS catalogue and a press folder with precious & personalised information.
We have developed the graphics in a variety of ways throughout the years. In the beginning we collaborated with a young and very talented Finnish collective responsible for Bulgaria Magazine. After that most of the times we enlisted the help of past finalists of ITS asking them to send us proposals based on a brief we would provide them with. As you can imagine, among the designers selected for ITS#FASHION and ITS#ACCESSORIES, there are some amazing drawers, people who could easily quit fashion and focus just on illustration, like Aitor Throup for instance, who developed a wonderful drawing for ITS#SIX, or David Aliperti who drew some incredible collages of caricatures for ITS#FIVE, and Anna Sheldon who even impressed our partner YKK with an amazing comic strip on the boots she developed for the Accessories Competition…
Then last year we decided to involve an amazing local talent. And when we say amazing, we really mean it. The way this guy draws is just incredible, we had to get him again because we literally fell in love with the outcome of last year’s graphics, and those of you who saw (or have…) the ITS#EIGHT t-shirt and bag know exactly what we’re talking about.. His name is Andrea Toselli. The concept for “The Confederation of Fantastic Voyagers” is strongly inspired by retro-futurism, steam punk, and old science fiction movies. So we called Andrea, bombarded him with words and images on cogs, machinery, steampunk culture, pipes, clock mechanisms, iron, copper and then left him alone to absorb all the information so it could “explode” through his hands…
Well, the result is here in front of your eyes. A steaming warm copper heart is visible through a porthole on the front of the Crew t-shirt (that’s a very limited edition, since it goes only to the staff members!), with tubes and cables popping out from the back. The white t-shirt which will be delivered to all our guests is a complicated mechanism that bears an ITS#NINE inscription in one of its cogs, and hints at a humanoid robotic steam punk figure on the back, with the bag replicating this same graphic on a black background.
