One year later – Chapter Two. The ITS 2014 winners and their careers
19 Dicembre 2015
Following our first chapter survey on what’s up with the ITS 2014 winners (have a look here), here we are with chapter two to let you know about the rest of the 2014 winners.
Footwear designer Takafumi Arai‘s craftmanship was key among the reasons that had YKK decide last minute to create a prize just for him, the YKK Special Award. While most seem to be attracted by 3D printing and the last innovations in technology applied to footwear design, Takafumi goes the opposite direction with a leather patchwork traditional technique that caught the eye of Japanese shop United Arrows, which is going to launch his handmade shoes by the end of this year. We’ll let you know more about this through our facebook page as soon as it’s out.
Lamat is the brand by YKK Award and Eyes On Talents Award winner Ivana Damjanovic, who has dedicated a lot of time after ITS to work ethics and craftmanship education, since all of her products are handmade. Without adhering to the standard “season by season” calendar but focusing on getting a product out there when she is satisfied with it (something we do indeed appreciate), Ivana has developed new pieces which have been presented during Premiere Classe on October 2nd-5th during Paris Fashion Week.
Millinery and jewellery designer Maiko Takeda‘s career simply skyrocketed after ITS 2014, with features in perhaps all the most important magazines one can think of. Winner of the Vogue Talents Award for ITS ACCESSORIES, Maiko caught the attention of artist & musician Bjork who wore her pieces during the Biophilia World Tour as well as for the cover of her latest endeavour Vulnicura. Headpieces by Maiko are continuing to being featured a bit everywhere, for instance in the latest Hunger Games movie. But that’s not it. While receiving recognition for her own brand, Maiko has been hired by Issey Miyake as an accessories designer too…
Italian fashion designer Virginia Burlina was selected as an ITS ARTWORK 2014 finalist for her outstanding artistic abilities, so evident in her portfolio. Gifted with a drawing ability which rightly deserves to be on a canvas, that’s exactly what Virginia developed as an artwork project, taking her graduation collection concept and framing it. And it’s not just her drawing skills of course: her use of colour, her impressive beading ability (an incredibly time-consuming process which did not stop her from including it widely in her fashion collection) certainly were the reasons Dries Van Noten decided to have her work in his team, and she has been doing so since.
Picking the winner of the 2014 edition of ITS JEWELRY was such a challenge that it led the jurors to choose not one but two finalists for the Swarovski Jewelry Award, Noriko Nakazato and Lior Shulak. Since ITS Noriko has been receiving great attention with her brand back home in Japan, with participations in Tokyo Fashion Week and exhibitions of her work both in Tokyo and in London as well as a TV feature on NHK World TV Japan. Lior instead went on with her eponymous jewelry line while also co-founding & designing a new one, Contour Studio based in Tel-Aviv and focused on clean geometric designs taking inspiration from city landscapes, architecture and mechanism.
The winner of the first edition of the Samsung Galaxy Award, fashion finalist Leonie Barth, already came from some important work experiences in as a stylist in G-Star Raw and as a design assistant intern for Bruno Pieters. Following ITS 2014 she established herself as a freelance print designer while at the same receiving great feedback from blogs and magazines as well as from stylists wanting to borrow pieces from her collection. In December 2014 she became design assistant to the Creative Director of Mother of Pearl Amy Powney, and is involved in designing the mainline as well as the accessory range. The brand works with an acclaimed artist every seasons (among which Polly Morgan, Fred Tomaselli, Fiona Banner, Keith Tyson and many more), which makes perfectly sense taking into consideration Leonie’s ITS collection and body of work with its dense intellectual and artistic concepts.
Judging from the above we can definitely say that a lot has happened in the careers of the 2014 winners, highlighting the quality of their work and their creativity as well as technical preparation, which has not remained unnoticed after ITS, proving also that we researched well. The ITS Generation continues and in a year’s time we’ll see what the 2015 bunch did…