Sailing the wave
For twenty years we sailed in search of ideas that describe you. Sailing through different lives, boundless imaginations, on the crests of your stories. With the helm held tightly in our hands, we discovered creative and emotional treasures.
We saw footprints and traced hundreds of thousands of tracks, but we trusted the compass that led us to each of you. We have shared journeys and experiences, weathered storms, followed the flow and the uncontrollable passage of time, which we have sailed with consciousness and understanding.
We plunged into your minds, sometimes surrounded by the dense silence of messages. Never stop gliding on this liquid path of life: we will guard your first creatures, as in a book of myths. The ark that protects and welcomes will always blow in the wind of freedom to embrace other fellow travellers.
From our hometown Trieste we will continue to explore the world. Certain that new treasures enclosed in precious coffers will let us keep surprising the world.
Raise the sails.
BARBARA FRANCHIN
ITS Founder and Director
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.
The 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.
Xiaoling Jin
Zongbo Jiang
Digital fashion designer
Born 28th October 1994, Chinese
Born 8th November 1994, Chinese
Yudai Tanaka
Anna Tanaka
Fashion designer
Born 10th October 1992 Japanese
Born 20th June 1991 Japanese
Hin Fung Jesse Lee
Fashion designer
Born 5th July 1994, Chinese
Charlie Constantinou
Fashion designer
Born 25th June 1998, British
Ruby Mellish
Accessories designer
Born 14th May 1998, British
Eva Heugenhauser
Fashion designer
Born 22nd October 1997, Austrian
Victor Salinier
Accessories designer
Born 24th December 1997, French
Dmytro Hontarenko
Accessories designer
Born 22nd October 1994, Ukrainian
The finalists
Twenty years of ITS, the return of our traditional physical format on 9-10 September after two covid-struck years, and the preview of ITS Arcademy with the anticipation of our First Exhibition curated by Olivier Saillard. The 20th generation of talents are up for the experience of a lifetime, and we can’t wait to finally meet them in person here in Trieste, Italy.
Fashion
Yudai Tanaka
Anna Tanaka
Fashion designer
Born 10th October 1992 Japanese
Born 20th June 1991 Japanese
Eva Heugenhauser
Fashion designer
Born 22nd October 1997, Austrian
Accessories
Ruby Mellish
Accessories designer
Born 14th May 1998, British
Victor Salinier
Accessories designer
Born 24th December 1997, French
Special projects
ITS Sportswear Award powered by Lotto Sport
€3,000, €2,000 and €1,000 awarded by Lotto Sport to three winners challenged with a sneakers project.
ITS Artwork Award powered by Swatch Art Peace Hotel
€10,000 assigned by Swatch Art Peace Hotel, upon selection among the ITS Contest participants.
Applicants were considered for the following Awards:
ITS Arcademy Award
€15,000 and a 6-month mentorship by PITTI Immagine Tutoring & Consulting Direction to the most creative, socially aware and innovative finalist project.
ITS Media Award
€8,000 awarded by the ITS Contest 2022 Media Jury to the fashion, accessories or jewellery finalist showing the strongest ability to transmit their innovative vision in a socially meaningful way.
ITS Video Presentation Award
€3,000 awarded by ITS to the best fashion film, selected among all ITS Contest applications.
ITS Digital fashion Award
€3,000 awarded by ITS to the best digital fashion project selected among all ITS Contest applications.
OTB Award
€10,000 assigned by OTB to a fashion, accessories or jewellery finalist.
ITS Artwork Award powered by Swatch Art Peace Hotel
€10,000 assigned by Swatch Art Peace Hotel, upon selection among the ITS Contest participants.
ITS Sportswear Award powered by Lotto Sport
€3,000, €2,000 and €1,000 awarded by Lotto Sport to three winners challenged with a sneakers project.
ITS Special Mention powered by Luxottica
€3,000 awarded by Luxottica, selected among all ITS Contest 2022 applications.
ITS Special Mention powered by Vogue Italia
the ITS Special Mention powered by Vogue Italia will be assigned to a fashion, accessories or jewelry finalist. The winner’s collection will be featured on the Vogue.it website.
ITS Responsible Creativity Award powered by CNMI
€5,000 awarded by CNMI – Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana and selected from all ITS Contest entries.
ITS Footwear Award powered by Fondazione Ferragamo
€5,000 & the opportunity of an internship in the company’s creative dept., awarded by Fondazione Ferragamo to one of the footwear entries for ITS Contest.
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