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JOIN THE REBELLION.
never trust the barber to tell their story, express their experience through their creations, convey their feelings, passions, and sorrows”.
NONE OF THESE PEOPLE EXIST.
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Each clothing piece is carefully stored in a dedicated space, equipped to preserve even the most fragile creation, so that it can be displayed in pristine condition during the exhibitions that will be hosted in the 1,400-square-metre Gallery. The first temporary exhibit is curated by Olivier Saillard, former director of Paris Fashion Museum Palais Galliera, whose significant selection of fashion items, accessories, jewellery pieces, and digital photography projects trace a timeline of ITS Contest’s history. Each installation is encased in frames resembling shipping boxes for artworks, as if they had just been unloaded from the hold of a freighter docked in the port of Trieste. Despite their twenty or so years, these pieces’ compellingly creative force is still perfectly intact. Instead of being vestiges of the past, they represent voices of the future. One of Barbara Franchin’s mantras is: “Do not ask me what will be in fashion next year. ITS is an incubator of potential that could become reality in up to ten years”.
ITS Arcademy’s open gates breathe a gust of fresh air and contemporary spirit into the very heart of Trieste – after all, the Arcademy itself hangs on to the rocky cliffs of this Gulf only thanks to the strong hold of Barbara Franchin and her determination to call Trieste, and Trieste alone, her home. A true privilege for all those who can now experience the Arcademy’s international dimension, following an existential itinerary through the multi-faceted aesthetics of dress sense, where inspiration flows and creativity roams free, paving new paths in its stride.
This is the extraordinary legacy of ITS Contest and its twenty years of history: an open archive that will continue to be updated and serve as a seismographer of world fashion. It would be impossible to confine such legacy within the narrow label of a museum with a permanent, unchanging exhibition. The Manifesto of new-born ITS Foundation enshrines the latter’s core values with the verbs display, share, disseminate, whose goals are entertainment, surprise, and, most importantly, the wish to help individuals find their inner creativity and set it free.
