ITS Contest 2022 Winners.
The Ark of Creativity sails home, with a new generation of young talents.
Navigating the seas of talent.
Salvaging fragments of creativity
from the waters of oblivion.
Reaching our destination.
ITS Contest 2022 Winners
Announcing the ITS Contest 2022 Winners! A generation of talents developing touching narratives, dreaming of improving the world, and celebrating the analog dimension of the printed book as a guardian of knowledge. One of their strongest trends were nostalgic memories of family, above all of their grandparents in this post-covid era, together with gender fluidity which has nothing to hide anymore. Not even the designers themselves, frequently involved in modeling their own work.
The Media Gallery of
ITS Contest 2022
The Ark of Creativity
is finally available!
ITS Contest 2022:
The Ark of Creativity
Watch the fashion show intro video
Watch the fashion show
Watch the fashion show Awards Ceremony
Watch the launch video
ITS celebrates 20 years of creativity
Through ITS Contest we sailed the seas of creativity led by the trail of talent. We saved from oblivion treasures we showcased, preserved and stored for the future. In 20 years we built a creative archive that now has found a safe harbour, ITS Arcademy. And we are ready to open its doors.
BARBARA FRANCHIN
ITS Founder and Director
Twenty years
This is how I like to tell the story. When I was a young girl I wanted a dream dress for my high school graduation. In the building where I lived, in the town of Trieste that I love, there was a little place of wonders, a small atelier with a selection of precious fabrics. Here someone’s love of fashion rivaled and sometimes surpassed my own. Imagine me going in there. And never coming out again. Why? There is no other proof of creativity like fashion. Interpretable on so many levels, artistic, social, economic, psychological, anthropological... Even now I am still discovering more, all of which are useful to decrypt its many meanings.
This is why I have decided to dedicate my life to traversing those compositional, constructional and emotional territories that make up the great puzzle of fashion as a representation of the self and, at the same time, a seismograph of a planet. By ‘fashion’, of course, I also mean the objects, whether ornamental or functional, that we wear on our bodies.
It is real, concrete and intangible, fulfilling demands of the mind and responding to those of the body. ITS was born as an incubator of new aesthetic grammars exactly twenty years ago: my desire to ‘be a family’, to be able to count on a group of people who were similar to me in terms of ideas and thought processes, led me to immediately build a small team, in order to stimulate mutual discussion, free circulation of ideas, and to welcome different points of view.
From 2002, in a city that had nothing to do with the classic fashion capitals, the first portfolios arrived from young designers from all over the world. This was in part thanks to the rapport installed with the most important fashion institutes and universities.
Prototypes, moodboards, videos, photos, music tracks arrived along with the portfolios: the manifestation of a project that gathers encounters, mental associations, happy contaminations.
It started from here, growing year after year, researching new design objects, new materials, new territories, new images. I demand a high level of professionalism from the members of the jury attending the final show and award ceremony: it is essential that honesty reigns among every member of the ITS Family, that there is no cynical approach but respect for that seed that every true designer contains within. It is up to us to nurture and cultivate it with love and care.
This practice has never failed. Perhaps in everything else, we may have become cognizant and more structured, but the focus on preserving the inner landscape of each participant has remained. What still moves me today is seeing how the arrival of the designers in Trieste during the days of ITS releases good-humoured energies, giving off an aura of cosmopolitan domesticity: after all, it is a place that has always received and hosted disparate people, cultures and spiritualities. This creates a nice emotional short circuit: with many of the finalists I stay in touch even when they become world stars like Demna Gvasalia or Matthieu Blazy, among others.
And I like to think that, if fashion is a complex universe of different materials, energies and bodies moving along different trajectories, a part of this universe - let’s call it the initial ‘Big Bang’ - was born here, under the blue skies, in front of the fiery sunsets, between a toast and an aperitif in the wonderful bars of this city.
Contacts
For contest related enquiries
tel +39 040 300589 + choose schools & contestants from the switchboard
For all other enquiries
tel +39 040 300589
If you want to be updated with the latest news in young creativity you cannot miss our youtube channel: new videos every week!
ITS Contest Numbers
80 countries
80 nations
37 nations
50 countries
International Talent Support
The Seismographer
Teaching creativity. Interview with Ike Rust, menswear tutor to former ITS winners.
13 February, 2023
In the twenty years of ITS Contest rarely have we seen such consistency in training young designers that would be then be selected as finalists by the ITS Jury, a first step of brilliant careers in the industry. The quality of Ike Rust’s students is undeniable and the students themselves recall his teaching as a…
The Seismographer
ITS Contest names that ring a bell.
Craig Green, David Koma, Liam Fahy and Lee Matthews in the ITS Arcademy Collection.
12 January, 2023
In the history of contemporary fashion, documented through the perspective of the ITS Arcademy Collection, there are designers who made history. Interestingly, it’s not always names that made it through to the finals. Perhaps because their talent was still too raw when they applied, or maybe because the jury was unable to understand their creativity…
The Seismographer
One Collection, infinite stories: Religion. Looking at the religious elements of the ITS Arcademy collection.
05 December, 2022
Looking for either controversy, beauty, culture or symbolism, it is no mystery why fashion drives inspiration from religion. They are undeniably intertwined: religions and religious orders have dress codes and use fashion to communicate position, sanctity, pureness and the entire spectrum of religious emotions and meaning. And fashion has always been intrigued by how religion…