The room you are currently in is the Archive, the place where we store a significant part of the Fondazione ITS heritage, including 14,935 portfolios, 1,309 garments, 188 accessories, 120 jewellery pieces, and over 700 photography projects.

The uniqueness of this archive lies in the fact that it is a collection of the early works of young talents, namely their graduation theses, free from commercial dynamics and thus entirely devoted to innovation and experimentation, without compromise.

Many of these young talents have become highly influential designers, such as Demna, Creative Director at Balenciaga, Matthieu Blazy, Creative Director at Maison Chanel, Nicolas di Felice, Artistic Director at Maison Courrèges, and many others who hold prominent positions at prestigious companies.

Until 2021, this heritage was kept in the attic of a building at Piazza Venezia 1, here in Trieste, under the name “ITS Creative Archive”.

THE ARCHIVE TODAY

Since 2022, thanks to the Fondazione CrTrieste, it has finally found a home that suits its importance, allowing us to preserve it in the best possible way. Generali, with its 'Generali ensuring the future of creativity' project, supports us in the conservation and restoration of the garments.

In addition to the relocation of the works, between 2020 and 2021, a team of six staff members re-catalogued them one by one, recording all conservation and restoration operations in a database. Each garment was analysed from various perspectives, including measurements, volumes, materials, techniques and colours, developing the best conservation conditions, with close attention to any kind of damage requiring restoration, even the most apparently insignificant.

Once this operation was completed, the works were placed inside these compactable archives for proper storage. The opening you see is staged, it was designed to give you a rough idea of how the objects are stored inside. In reality, space and protection needs mean storage is much denser, and each piece is, of course, wrapped in a specific protective material. The challenge we face is to use as little space as possible while still maintaining the best conservation conditions.

In other spaces on the ground floor of this building, we store items that are too large for these compactable archives or need to be kept on mannequins or lying down horizontally.

CATALOGUING AND CONSERVATION

All the portfolios of the ITS Contest finalists are also kept in this archive, while the portfolios of the participants are partly in the Library you visited earlier or partly on the ground floor in other dedicated spaces.

In 2021, during the re-cataloguing of the entire archive, a team of 15 people also analysed and checked the conditions of all the portfolios. Each one received its new protective case (which we saw in the Library), labelled with a barcode, and all the contents were carefully reviewed and indexed again.

As for the restoration, it has so far been carried out on just over a hundred of the 1,300 pieces in the complete collection. Additionally, every month we clean all the works on display and monitor their condition, of course.

This is the current state of the art. What lies ahead is a job that will continue over time, not only on the items we already possess but also on new acquisitions from the ITS Contest and donations.

Beyond this room, behind the door to the left (facing the archive), there is a space dedicated to restoration work that is not open to the public. We call it the CONSERVATORY.

The great challenge for the ITS conservation team is the so-called 'new materials' like silicone materials, bioplastics, or gelatins. Restoration studies are still in the very early stages, and we do not yet know how these materials will behave in the long term. The goal of this archive is also to serve as a 'case history' in this conservation challenge. It is particularly stimulating because, in effect, we are writing new conservation protocols that did not exist before.

Finally, a fun anecdote: since many of the pieces in our collection were the theses of the finalists, it was often the case that the items were completed at the very last moment, sometimes only a few minutes before being presented to their school or at ITS Contest. For example, during the conservation analysis, we found many pieces with unfinished seams, sometimes replaced with bits of sellotape: this is a peculiarity of the ITS Arcademy archive that we have decided to keep alive because it tells the story of the artwork. We intervened only in cases where the conservation status was at risk.

LEARNING AT ITS ARCADEMY

Our visit is coming to an end! But ITS Arcademy – for those of you here in Trieste not just for a few hours or who plan to return for a few more days – still has a lot to offer if, with this brief journey, we’ve managed to reignite your interest in engaging with creation. There’s an entire educational area dedicated to workshops and seminars waiting for you.

The educational activities of ITS Arcademy aim to revive users' curiosity, stimulating their innate creativity through a playful, experimental, and sensory approach. We exclusively promote responsible creativity, mindful of the environment and its resources.

In addition to the finalists of ITS Contest, we collaborate with local artists and artisans, teachers, and professionals of all kinds. You can check out our activity programme online. We develop and continuously add new projects, varying them according to the seasons and focusing on inclusivity. We offer experiences for everyone: from elementary school children to adults of all ages, whether they are experts, students, tourists, residents, or simply curious.

These experiences will allow you to delve even deeper into the details of a portfolio, to use your hands to create, to discover the secrets of complex techniques directly from our finalists, who will return to give lectures open to all. But also simply to repair a cherished garment, to extend the life of the creativity you’ve experienced. Because ITS Arcademy does not want to be just a place to be discovered, but also a place for living and breathing creativity.

ITS PUBLIC'S CHOICE AWARD

Thank you again for your interest and, as mentioned, if you’ve decided to participate in the public voting for the ITS Public’s Choice Award, feel free to return to the Wunderkammer to further explore the projects before casting your vote. Leave your voting slip at the entrance and perhaps have another look at the ITS Arcademy shop: the Fashionlands catalogue, for example, includes much more information about the curatorial vision of Olivier Saillard and Emanuele Coccia. We also rely on the shop to fund our activities, so if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen today, help us improve what we do!