This year’s trends range from mix & match - with the creative and disruptive excess typical of a young creative generation expressing itself, where gender has no limits and boundaries, and fluidity seems to be the established non-rule – to the purest essentiality and cleanliness of lines in which a few details stand out and burst out. It is almost as if an internal sparkle was taking over an external one, and being mattered more than appearing.
Yet sustainability in all its forms – environmental, social, human, in its deeper sense – is ever-present and widespread, like a red line implied across all the trends and all the choices. It unravels along various paths – up-cycling, re-cycling, zero-waste, natural colors and dyeing, organic textiles – like a recurring element: the research and the reuse of objects and materials that young creative talents have sourced in their surroundings or have looked for, tell a story that come to the fore again through this regenerating process, with new, vibrant, unique meanings and interpretations.
The theme of sustainability, embraced for the first time by ITS in 2016, is now returning with an increasingly central role and relevance: it is now a true, inescapable necessity, as the crisis we are now facing, unmistakably finds its deepest origin in the sense of omnipotence and domination, alongside the lack of respect, of Man towards Nature. Four years on, what does Sustainability mean for the young ITS creatives? How has its perception and concrete application evolved for the young generations of fashion and design? We may observe this by comparing the 2016 report. While back then, the key references were those brands more strongly committed to social and environmental issues, but the line separating their statements and their true actions was blurred – in 2020 sustainability is an individual and collective civic deed, for each one does their part with their daily commitment. This is the era of sustainability 2.0, in which the actors are the single individuals, and one’s concrete, measurable commitment is the only thing that truly counts: a deeper awareness about the urgency of such commitment entails, as a consequence, also a stricter judgment towards those who honor it more honestly.
The ITS 2020 Finalists will be joining the ITS Family for the Finals on October 23, 2020. They represent 16 different nationalities tracing this year's map of global creativity: China, Israel, United Kingdom, Portugal, Estonia, Canada, Austria, Thailand, Ireland, South Korea, Japan, France, Greece, Ecuador, Germany, Kenya.