The YKK Project Reinvented!
February 08, 2010
If you are talented, have discovered how to express your talent and are not working for somebody else, things are so much easier. You have no boundaries, no specific requests and you can freely express your creativity. You are more like an artist. That's what we see most of the times in final year students at school (and we really love it actually): They certainly have deadlines to follow and teachers they need to answer to, but they are working on their freely inspired projects so their work is 100% passion. Pure creativity comes out of their minds and hands. Things change when they leave school and enter the business world. When they start working for brands, they need to learn to translate their abilities according to the brand they work for and what they need from them. It's not that they aren't free. They just need to understand how their creativity can adapt to what is required of them. It's like learning to channel energy...
Those of you out there who are enrolling (or about to do so...go and have a look at the Accessories page of our website!!) in the accessories competition of ITS#NINE will not only be presenting your freely inspired accessories projects. You will also be working on the YKK Project. It will challenge your creativity giving you a taste of what it is like to respond to a specific request.
Leading multinational company in the production of fastenings, YKK® has been the partner of the Accessories field of ITS since the very first edition in 2006. ITS#ACCESSORIES is now in its fifth year and the collaboration between ITS and YKK® is stronger than ever, finding and discovering some 55 of the most interesting young accessories designers in the world, like Heather Blake, who went to work for Salvatore Ferragamo and is now teaching footwear at London College of Fashion, or James Long, presenting his own line at London Fashion Week's MAN, incredible milliner Justin Smith with his own line JSmithEsquire and many, many others.
YKK® is obviously very keen to see what the best accessories talents around are capable of doing with fastenings and ITS has proven to be an excellent platform for this. They want to see uses of fastenings they had not thought about before and that is why they established the YKK Project, a challenge for the accessories competitors. In the past, the YKK Project asked competitors to develop proposals for at least three accessories foreseeing the use of YKK® fastenings picked from a sample book provided by YKK®.
This year the project is a lot more developed than before, with three different categories for the accessories contestants to work on. Each contestant must send, in addition to the collection enrolled, a proposal for at least one of the 3 categories. Category 1 is very similar to what the YKK Project used to be: Applicants are required to design at least three proposals of accessories containing one of the following innovative YKK® fastenings: Metalux™, Ez-TRAK®, Lumina® Size 12, Flexfix®, Prifa®.
For Category 2, applicants must reply in an artistic way to the statement " The Zipper in Next Generation Art". They can use any form or media (provided it fits specific dimension requirements...go and read all details in the entry requirements PDF!!!) and any kind of YKK fastening. This category was created because in a past edition an ITS#ACCESSORIES finalist present along with her collection stunning artworks that really struck YKK®. You can have a look at these here and here.
As for Category 3, YKK® wants to see your own personal fastening project, using any YKK® fastening you like as your starting point. Category 3 was also inspired by a past finalist who deliberately developed his own zipper slider to match the accessory he had developed. Have a look at what he was capable of doing here.
Accessories Finalists will be supported by YKK® branches around the world. To clearly understand all steps of the new YKK Project for this year, remember to check the YKK Project page of our website and also have a look at the YKK Sample Book online. This is a dedicated website which tells you everything you need to now on what is required from you by YKK®, with explanatory videos, clear samples of all fastenings you may use, and examples for each category.
Don’t panic if it sounds like a lot to do, it's not that terrible and you have plenty of time to work on it, as well as our Schools & Contestants department to rely on (you can write to schools-contestants@itsweb.org or call 0039-040-3220932) for any questions or concerns you may have.
What you need to remember also is that the YKK Award is a very good reason to invest all your energy in presenting great ideas: should you be the winner, you will receive €10,000 and your winning project will be the focus of a promotional image that will be used for communicational purposes all over the world! Below are a couple examples of the promotional posters of past winners:
YKK and ITS believe that your idea needs a space and this is it!
