“You need to dig deeper”

Olha Troian is an owner of a traditional Ukrainian accessories’ studio and a front woman of the ethno-rock music band DrymbaDaDzyga. She has been immersed in traditions for many years, reviving them in music and her author’s accessories, such as necklaces and wreaths.

She says in her childhood years she dreamed to have a lot of beads to create decorations, “Like any girl, I made something and proudly wore it.” As a second-year student of biology department, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Olha bought wool and started to felt without master classes. She presented her first necklace to Olena Tsybulska, the vocalist of the band DakhaBrakha, who, according to Olha, inspired her to establish the Makoviia Studio of Traditional Gown and Jewelry. She calls this period the starting point of her creative work.

Further she started to make wreaths: the folklore music band with which Olha is working was working on ritual songs for a wedding, and the bride needed a wreath. That was how Olha created her first, purely “intuitive,” wreath.

Olha, where you can learn this?

“I think at the Boichuk University, at the department of folklore studies at Taras Shevchenko University, and at the University of Culture and Art. I don’t have a higher artistic or music education, I am still learning and I have a personal view on traditional things. Having understood that I lacked knowledge of traditional techniques, I started to study photos and museum items, went on expeditions and met with collectors and craftsmen.

“The next stage for me was getting familiar with modern Japanese technique of making flowers from clay for flower decoration, ‘deco-clay’ and ‘modern-clay.’ Unlike traditional paper waxed and fabric flowers, the flowers that are made from this material, which in the end result looks like something in between paper and fabric, is more lasting and convenient to work with, personally for me. Working in deco-clay style, I understood that every time period dictates its own rules and makes one use the materials that are at hand. For my wedding wreath I started to use the deco-clay flowers that I made myself. Maybe that is why these wedding wreaths evoked great interest, and I received a lot of orders, which I haven’t had time to finish yet.”

Today at shops you can find various accessories, stylized as attributes of a national costume. How does a wreath or a handmade necklace differ from what mass market offers?

“What is our ‘popular’ culture of the period of independent Ukraine? Mostly it is the heritage of the USSR years: the distorted image of the folk costume in general and headwear in particular. Let alone the regional differences and the versatility they tried to destroy.

“Primitive artificial bright poppies, cornflowers, and sunflowers in modern wreaths that are abundant in souvenir shops have become a mistaken model, an erroneous sample to follow. Today in Ukraine there are not so many craftsmen who work in real reconstruction and a lot of those who make money on so-called ‘grave’ wreaths, pretending that they are traditional. Fortunately, in Kyiv we have a few shops and ateliers which make and sell ‘right things.’”

Ethnic motives are used in modern clothes with increasing frequency. In your opinion, should one combine modern and traditional things correctly to avoid dissonance?

“If you want to sew a dress with ethnic motifs, you should work with professionals who not just have taste and name of a great designer, but also are versed in ethnography and culture history. Or hire a consultant who is versed in folk clothes, symbols, and traditions. Personally I don’t like the embroidered dresses a la Vita Kin which are so popular now. But I admit that some of them are quite nice and exquisite.

“I love to combine folk authentic decorations with modern clothes. I often wear traditional costume, although I have many piercings in ears and on my face. For example, you cannot do the same in Norway, they will call it tasteless. You should wear either a modern or fully traditional dress. There traditional jewelry is passed from generation to generation. And namely this method will preserve traditional clothes in unchanged, undistorted condition. We are experimenting. On the one hand, this has a powerful mechanism of popularization of our culture within Ukraine and abroad, because simplified and mixed with modern things traditional versions of clothes are perceived more easily and absorbed sooner. But on the other hand, it distorts the image of the traditional costumes. I am sure that numerous fashion lovers, especially those who are not from Ukraine and who haven’t seen any real embroidered shirts, but know that Vita Kin’s dresses are based on the motifs of Ukrainian embroidered shirts, think that long ago we were wearing multicolored shirt-gowns, without any skirts or belts, but this is nonsense.”

As a person involved in reviving traditions, can you tell how great is the demand for Ukrainian things today?

“There is a great demand, it is most vividly expressed abroad, in Ukrainian diasporas. Of course, it has grown over the past four years, and in Ukraine more and more people have started to take interest in their native culture, but these people come from certain circles: intelligentsia, artists, fashion beau monde. Now it is not enough to wear a T-shirt with Chinese machine drawing a la embroidered shirt, you need to dig deeper. We need to work out a true way of developing and reviving culture, traditions, and values.”