We wanted to interview ITS#ONE and ITS#TWO finalist Fabrizio Talia, since he represents very well a finalist who has developed into a fully mature designer with an important career background, working for renowned brands such as John Galliano, Moschino and Dolce and Gabbana. He knows fashion very well, and most importantly knows ITS very well. So we sent him 5 questions. He sent us back the text you find below. We never asked to meet people like him, we always just dreamed it could happen. We always worked hard in the idealistic view that there were people out there like him who would understand. And maybe we haven’t understood a thing, but it’s good to share the same feeling with somebody else. We work hard to attract people like Fabrizio, and we were lucky enough to meet a few in these 9 years of struggles…We really hope you enjoy reading this article.
One cannot improvise an autobiography. While an interview leaves no space for meditation, an autobiography forces you to do so.
It is always hard to speak about oneself and it becomes even harder when one is required to honestly express and clearly picture their own life in the context of an interview, demanding fast-paced rhythm and essentiality, at the same time narrowing down the space for that emotional involvement that narration demands.
Looking back, 9 years have passed since I turned my entrance in the fashion world into my life project. The dreamy attitude that is at the core of my life project was an essential companion of my whole youth, wrapping up in a dream-like vision aspirations that at the time were so vague and undefined. These became perfectly clear when I graduated from high school. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Today the fashion system is my whole existence.
ITS has marked the passing of time, and fundamental steps of my journey. It wasn’t only the door through which I entered this world nor simply a precious opportunity or a “launch pad”. Much more than that, it allowed me to learn - and remember - the inescapable principles of this great passion. The ethical ones, not just the artistic or communicational ones.
It was in Trieste during the first edition of ITS that I was able to get in touch with the people who then came to be essential in my career. Through them my dreams quickly became reality: I landed in Paris and was allowed to put to the test all the lessons I had been taught at school, lessons I had followed respecting the tradition and heritage of this job. I worked on the mannequin, refining Couture techniques as my ideas took shape on the catwalk shows of John Galliano. Motivations were infinite, my sensibility was safe.
I could freely and instinctively translate the emotions around me in an environment that preserved, protected and respected a creativity that was not to be contaminated or influenced by the reality of the market rules, that block freedom of expression. During those years I learned to loose interest in the mainstream trends. I wasn’t very interested in what other designers were doing. I began to detox from all those images my eyes had absorbed when, driven by passion, I would “devour” fashion magazines to be updated on everything revolving around the world that fascinated me so much.
Sadly, today the contact with everyday reality has weakened the idealistic view of expression I used to have in the beginning a lot. I was often forced to leave aside the poetic tones even though I believe they should always be essential to the freedom of expression which in my opinion is the quintessence of this job. I therefore look back at these 9 years of work in fashion with critical and melancholic eyes.
My expectations and aspirations were disappointed more than once, forcing me to abandon style principles I feel are fundamental. I accepted to compromise my expression to survive in a reality that is so competitive and market-driven. Reality has saturated what was once intended as a clear passion for a select few, completely void of the vulgar market influences of investors.
Now many myths have collapsed and fashion is tailored to the laws of the market. Product is planned and developed only to satisfy the needs of an ever larger audience lacking a precise identity. Fashion projects are based on sociological studies of trends that catalogue and divide into fields everything there is as well as everything that is produced from other brands, season after season. Any creative approach out of this context is debased.
Only now do I understand why some of the masters in this field have reluctantly decided to abandon the scene when this evolution (or involution?) took place. This is a change that doesn’t even leave space for any kind of guarantee of quality. Sometimes it even makes it hard to identify those brands that insist on having a strong identity amidst an anonymous and standardized massification.
This pessimism of mine is relieved by the memory of a conversation with Barbara Franchin, by the memories of Trieste and its landscapes, by the nostalgia and the emotions that in these 9 years tied me to this city and to the wonderful people I had the luck to meet there. These memories make me understand the importance that events like ITS have for the fashion world: They are still capable of maintaining the pleasure for research and for freedom of expression above everything else. They privilege aesthetical and artistic contents that are being lost elsewhere.
Many seem to have forgotten that the only way to preserve the value of fashion is through innovation rather than repetition. I often see style models and winning concepts repeated on and on in the hopes that they will continue providing the same monetary success, with impersonal and improvised interpretations meant to fit on abstract categories of people, identified through questionable and over-elaborate studies.
Year after year, experiencing ITS gave me the opportunity to understand and re-discover people with strong values, with determination, confidence, willing to stand the challenge, people who are gifted with great courage. People who worked hard to create a space to collect and protect the dreams of these young people. A perfect machine that must not stop, that has been able to encourage young talent giving them the tools to create their dreams. ITS believed and believes in the abilities of people who risk being isolated voices outside the crowd.
To me, ITS has been the best press office, the best talent scout, and the best school…
