by TRIESTE, Italy – “You are another strong, conscious and revolutionary generation of ITS [contestants]. Everyone got a human and professional experience.”
So said Barbara Franchin, founder and master of the International Talent Support fashion competition, known as ITS, showing respect for the 16 contestants in the 2023-2024 edition.
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Franchin was visibly emotional. ITS has had highs and lows over the past 20 years and as well as finding a new home in the spaces of the CRTrieste Foundation in 2020 was a mission that it seemed when it opened two years ago, Franchin’s ambition leaves her to do better and more. more must be fulfilled.
“We need Italian fashion companies to stand by us, share the experience with us… knowing that we can give back the outputs we receive [from talents] annual. We need financial support in this operation, which is not only for us, but also really for anyone living on this planet. We need investments in culture, even when they don’t provide an immediate return on investment,” she said, noting that her goal is to find a new home for ITS of about 75,000 to 105,000 square feet.
She mentioned the French support system for fashion competitions, without naming names but clearly looking at competitions such as the Hyères Festival, among others, which received support from both institutional and corporate players.
However she was excited to reveal this year’s ITS winners, but also the second exhibition at ITS Arcademy, the competition’s headquarters, archives and multi-purpose space covering 7,000 square feet.
A meta-fashion exhibition that shows the role that garments play in everyone’s life, their emotional connections and their power to evoke memory, the show is entitled “The Many Lives of a Garment”.
Franchin once again enlisted Olivier Saillard as curator of the exhibition, this time with the help of the philosopher Emanuele Coccia. Filled with mannequins clad in outfits from previous ITS contestants, some spread out in space as if they were visitors looking at works of art, the show tackled the different stages of clothing’s life, from being displayed in a shop window to until tried on in a dressing room, taken out by the person himself, then lost, deteriorated, displayed in a museum or even described through words.
Conceptually, the show is about the idea that the clothes that are worn every day are themselves a walking exhibition, which, according to the curators, gives an idea to the curatorial decisions of the device.
“This exhibition began three decades ago, [because] inside there are many small experiments that I used to do in the past, and this is the first time we show them all, together in the same place,” said Sailard.
The reason to avoid traditional fashion publishing was suggested by Issey Miyake, Sailard said. “He said that a dress is only half finished when it comes out of the atelier, and it’s completely finished, like 100 percent, when that dress is worn by a man or a woman,” said Saillard the designer Japanese. “So, that’s always there [fashion] the exhibitions are a paradox,” in that the wearer has no input.
Case in point: an entire section of the show was devoted to small frames detailing the shirts Sailard owned and wore, with text written on either side of the memories and life stories associated with each one of them. Two cabinets displayed actual outfits from Charlotte Rampling and Tilda Swinton, arranged on chairs as if they were ready to be picked up by themselves, while another glass case featured a wedding dress designed by Valentino Garavani for model Alda Balestra von Stauffenberg.
The latter display case is expected to change its content over time, as ITS Arcademy hopes that the citizens of Trieste will lend their personal clothes that have some emotional meaning to display for a month each.
The radical approach of the exhibition was seen in the section that collected fashion reports from literature – no clothes on display. “Garments have an ostensive and self-narrative power that transcends the physical presence of fabrics and the object itself,” said Coccia.
The second exhibition in the Wunderkammer space was dedicated to the creation of the 2023-2024 finalists under the tagline “Born to Create,” the overarching manifesto of ITS.
Both exhibitions will be open to the public until January 6, 2025
ITS Arcademy’s curatorial approach to preserving and archiving the work of young talents as if they were museum worthy (a recently introduced digital book allows hard copy portfolios stacked in the library space to be brought to life through animation cartoon) is a testament to the ITS team’s commitment to finding and promoting the next generation of designers; they have been offering them financial support and publicity for the past two decades.
The former ITS headquarters – a small attic of an 18th-century palazzo in the center of the city – is waiting to be converted into a housing space for residencies for designers and artists in town, and Franchin hopes another project will soon find a backer.
On Friday night, the jury of the 2023-2024 edition of the competition awarded 13 awards to the 16 finalists, who were shortlisted from 782 applicants from 65 countries.
The ITS Arcademy Award, which comes with a cash prize of 15,000-euro, was awarded to the Japanese talent Momoka Sato, who presented a whimsical collection with a strong and elaborate narrative attached, inspired by a fictional nun who lives on top of a mountain to worship. a monk by her side.
The collection, which is rich in layers and nods to traditional Japanese garments, including a kimono trouser silhouette, has embedded recycling practices, for example by reusing the cotton fillings of old mattresses.
Sato dedicated her collection to her grandmother, with whom she spent time while working on the lineup. The young designer, a graduate of Bunka Fashion College with a master’s degree from Nottingham Trent University in the UK, said she applied to ITS to introduce her brand, which was formally launched during the pandemic years, to an international audience.
“I didn’t expect to win; that’s why I’m honored to receive this award,” she said.
Jurors agreed that young creative people are looking more at the inner world and the outer world in a way that puts their personal experiences in perspective and dialogue with socio-political, cultural and anthropological matters.
“They are much more likely to absorb everything that is happening in the world,” said Valentina Maggi, creative practice director at the Paris-based consulting and energy firm Floriane de St Pierre & Associès and a member of the jury, including also the curator Thierry. -Maxime Loriot and creative director Ann Demeulemeester Stefano Gallici.
“In the past creative processes used to be much more individual, and today they are open to the social and cultural conversations that were taking place,” she said.
According to director of The Museum at FIT, Valerie Steele, a longtime juror at ITS, the self-perception of fashion creators is shifting gears.
“I think there is more of an understanding among them that it is an artistic field in which they are, and they are not always so eager to say that I am an artist, but they feel that fashion is a creative thing, an artistic field. And so they want to still be able to pursue their own creative endeavors, like a painter, or a musician, say. Her own life story makes a lot more sense because of personal interests,” she said.
“It’s more idealistic and more realistic than previous generations. They are aware of all kinds of dangers and needs in fashion,” said Steele. “They know there are a lot of people of their generation [think that] fashion is bad, fashion is exploitative, it is destroying the world… But they also feel that they can have an impact. And they can do something that takes the best sides of fashion and enhances the bad sides,” she said.
“I was struck by how all these talents, without exception, are so careful and feel so urgent to telegraph their positive influence within the fashion system, with social awareness. [messages] and sustainability practices,” Gallici Ann Demeulemeester pointed out.
“In the last week, during their stay here, we talked much more about the meaning of life and the urgency they have to avoid a negative impact on the planet, rather than about design and silhouettes,” explained Franchin. “They know that our generation won’t do much more to save the planet thinking that someone else will handle [it]and they know that they are the ones who are supposed to tackle those issues.”
Franhin emphasized how fashion talents see themselves as artists using fashion as one of the many mediums they could explore. “I’ve seen young children’s aspirations evolve from ‘I want to be John Galliano’ and ‘I want to be an all-encompassing creative director’ to ‘I want to be an artist’,” a Franhin showed.
“These young people do not see a great future like previous generations, but they are able to turn this ‘black energy’ into a positive force,” said Matteo Battiston, chief design officer at EssilorLuxottica, noting who as socially responsible as the creative projects were. . “What is emerging from these competitions speaks of generational changes, when the dream of being a super creative within historical paintings is no longer so attractive, their aim is for their work to be the best and truest representation of themselves.”
The ITS Special Jury Prize, a 5,000-euro cash prize, was awarded to the Chinese designer Ju Bao for his pioneering denim-like knitwear, and the jeweler Richard Farbey from the UK a new 10,000-euro Award supported by Friuli Venezia. The Giulia region of Trieste was awarded the 2025 Capital of Culture to Tomohiro Shibuki, who upcycled vintage sportswear by needle felting for a frosted effect.
Other prizes included the ITS Responsible Creativity Award sponsored by the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, which awarded 5,000 euros to Ivan Delogu, an Italian creative who unveiled a craft collection made from upcycled plastic curtains, dead stock fabrics and other recycled materials to society explore his native matriarchal. region, Sardinia in Italy.
Other awards were sponsored by ITS partners including the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Wråd, Lotto Sport, Vogue Eyewear and EssilorLuxottica, as well as Fondazione Ferragamo, Pitti Immagine and Fondazione Sozzani.
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