The room you are in now is the ARCHIVE: the place where we preserve an important part of the heritage of Fondazione ITS, which includes 14,840 Portfolios, 1,100 fashion items, 165 accessories, 120 pieces of jewelry and over 700 photographic projects.

 

The uniqueness of this archive lies in its collection of the young talents' early works, namely their graduation projects, free from commercial dynamics and thus entirely devoted to innovation and experimentation without limits.

 

Until 2021, this heritage was stored in the attics of a building in Piazza Venezia 1, here in Trieste, under the name of ITS Creative Archive.

 

Since 2022, thanks to Fondazione CRTrieste, it has found its rightful place here, allowing us to preserve it in the best possible way. Generali, with its project 'Generali ensuring the future of creativity', supports us in regards to the conservation and restoration of garments.

 

In addition to transferring the works, between 2020 and 2021, a team of 6 people from our staff re-catalogued them one by one, recording all conservation and restoration operations in a database. Each garment was analysed from different perspectives, including measurements, volumes, materials, techniques and colours used, in addition to studying the best conservation conditions and carefully checking for any minimal damage requiring restoration.

 

At the end of this operation, the works were placed inside these compactable cabinets to be properly preserved. The opening you see has been set up to give you a vague idea of how the objects are stored inside the cabinets. In reality, for space and protection reasons, garment storage is much denser, and of course, each piece is packed with specific protective material. The challenge we face is to use as little space as possible while maintaining the best possible conservation conditions.

 

Another part of the heritage is kept in a storage room on the ground floor of this building, where we keep items too large for these cabinets or that need to be stored on a dress form or mannequin.

All Portfolios from ITS Contest finalists are also stored in this archive, while the portfolios of the entrants are kept in the Library you visited earlier and on the ground floor in other dedicated spaces.

 

In 2021, during the re-cataloguing of the works, a team of 15 people also analysed and reprocessed all of the Portfolios. Each received its new protective case (which you saw in the Library) labelled with a barcode, and all contents were carefully re-checked and indexed.

 

Regarding the restoration part, consider that at the moment it has been carried out on just over a hundred of the 1,100 items in the complete collection. Furthermore, every month we clean all the works on display and monitor their conservation status.

 

Everything we have told you so far is the state of the art. What awaits us now is work that will continue over time, not only on the objects we already own but also on all the new acquisitions that come from ITS Contest and from donations.

 

In addition to this room, beyond the door on the left (looking at the compactable units), there is a closed-off space dedicated to restoration work, which we call the CONSERVATORY.

Here, 3 types of restoration work are carried out:

1. Conservation, aimed at avoiding future deterioration;

2. Restoration, involving the replacement of components in addition to protection and maintenance on parts with severe and obvious damage;

3. Improvement, aimed at bettering the quality of the original.

 

Finally, a fun fact: since many of the pieces in our possession were the academic theses and graduation projects of the finalists, it often happened that the objects were completed at the last moment, even just minutes before being presented at ITS Contest. For example, during the conservation analysis we found many pieces with missing finishing stitches (often replaced with pieces of adhesive tape); this is a peculiarity of the ITS Archive that we have decided to keep alive because it tells the story of the work, intervening only in cases where the conservation status was at risk.

 

Well! Our visit has now come to an end, but ITS Arcademy - for those of you who are here in Trieste not just for a few hours or plan to come back to stay a few days longer - still has much to offer if we have been able, with this brief journey, to reignite your creativity. There is an entire Learning Area dedicated to educational experiences waiting for you.

ITS Arcademy's educational activities aim to reignite curiosity in participants, stimulating their innate creativity through a playful, experimental, and sensory approach. We promote exclusively responsible creativity, attentive towards the environment and its resources.

 

In addition to the ITS Contest finalists, we collaborate with local artists and artisans, teachers and professionals of all kinds. You can check our schedule of activities online: we develop and add new projects constantly, varying them according to the season and aiming for 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 what a Portfolio is, to use your hands to create, to discover the secrets of complex techniques directly from our finalists' voices, who will return to hold open lectures for everyone. Not just that, but also simply to repair a garment towards which you feel attachment or to extend the life of creativity you have experienced. Because ITS Arcademy doesn't want to be just a museum to discover and visit once, but a place where it is possible to live and breathe creativity.

 

Thank you again for your attention, and as mentioned, if you have decided to participate in the audience award voting to assign the ITS Community Award, feel free to return to the Wunderkammer to delve even deeper into the projects before making your judgement!