The best of ITS#TEN
If it’s true that, as Renzo Rosso says, “in a crisis period creativity emerges”, ITS#TEN is a demonstration of that. The International Talents Support, held since ten years in Trieste, Italy, is one of the most important creative competitions worldwide, and this year in particular I had the feeling that it was full of bright new ideas and the general level was very high.
The winner for the main prize, Fashion Collection of the Year, was Shaun Samson, with a collection called Latino Street Culture and American Workwear Have a Minimal Baby. This collection is based around the traditional fabrics of the working class, as well as the volume and shape of prison uniforms. Shaun developed a technique that seamlessly joins different fabrics, a visual allegory linking different aspects of menswear from prison uniforms to traditional American wool plaids. The volumes are interesting but above all the mix of different checks and patterns is originally tasteful.
I’m really proud (yes, let me be proud of my country for once!) because Kristian Guerra, student at IUAV (Venice, Italy), was the winner of the Fashion Special Prize offered by EVE, with his collection A.M.E.N. Shapes and volumes that resemble totems are a reflection on sportswear, starting from the chosen fabric treatment. Through a process of combustion, traces of shapes are impressed onto the material, enriching the surface and declaring the vitality of the wearer. Each outfit combines technical elements with sportswear references, creating exaggerated hybrids and altering the proportions of the body by projecting it sky high. Intertwined hands become highly-constructed puffer jackets. I love also the pencil sketches illustrating the project, which reminds me Aitor Throup and the paintings of Phil Hale.
One of the projects I liked the most among all the categories was the winner of the SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS Jewelry Award: the liquid jewellery by Sarah Vedel Hurtigkarl & Raluca Grada. The concept of this jewelry collection immortalizes the temporality of a fluid nature. It traces the movement of the liquid splitting up and coming back together. The pieces are like frozen moments captured into metal. Each one morphs into the other: an earring becomes a brooch and then a necklace. What the eye can’t see can be reconstructed by imagination and it is even more surprising: the design plays with the invisible lines connecting all the pieces, which can be guessed by the viewer as well as the wearer, giving Sarah’s and Raluca’s jewelry a very subtle poetic expression. Floating buoyantly on the body surface, they leave an enigmatic feel about their materiality.
Among the non-prized finalists, by the way, I especially like two whom I’d like to give an ideal Design Catwalk prize: the scultpural shoes of Netta Makkonen, and the beautifully assembled jewellery by Kat Marks.
Ariko
Shaun Samson
Kristian Guerra
Sarah Vedel Hurtigkarl & Raluca Grada
Netta Makkonen
Kat Marks
