Conscious and sub-conscious of the Ukrainian podium
During Ukrainian Fashion Week the situation was stable. The beau monde sported dazzling, white-toothed smiles, fanciful clothes, and sunglasses, while frenzied journalists raced around for stories, and cameras flashed. The first day of the 23rd Ukrainian Fashion Week was dedicated to the finest couturiers of Ukraine, including Lilia Poustovit, the promoter of Ukrainian fashion internationally, Victoria Gres, the designer of Janet Jackson’s costumes, Iryna Karavay, the favorite of Ukrainian fashionistas, and the conceptualist Olha Hromova, who is better known internationally as Olga Gromova.
That day, some of the designers presented their first lines, while others showed their secondary ones. Poustovit and Hromova displayed their major collections, while Karavay and Gres showed their commercial designs.
Poustovit, whose collections have long been seen all over Europe, is still participating in Ukrainian Fashion Week, and not because she wants to assert herself among her colleagues, who have achieved success in their own right. She wants to support Ukrainian fashion and show that young fashion designers have good prospects at home, not just abroad. This sounds rather romantic, but this couturier, whose designs are snapped up by the world’s leading concept stores, holds fast to this position.
It is interesting to watch Poustovit’s colleagues reacting to her new collection, the expressions on their faces as they peer from behind countless other faces of the people watching the parade of models. Some are trying to borrow her style, not by copying it but silently paying tribute to it while trying to create their own designs in order to create healthy competition.
The Poustovit brand never fails to amaze. This designer has an ability to perceive international moods and trends while firmly standing her ground, keenly aware of who she is. Before the opening of Ukrainian Fashion Week, this reporter interviewed Iryna Danylevska, the head of the organizing committee of UFW. We talked about how fashion sometimes turns into a cultural phenomenon. Ukrainian fashion — the Poustovit brand — is one of those rare cases, and it is always difficult to avoid plaudits because the designer herself consciously avoids them.
After a five-year pause Hromova returned to the Ukrainian fashion scene last season. Her company press release describes her fashion show as a “performance,” an “art project,” and a “synthesis of the achievements of modern and contemporary art.”
Hromova’s emphasis is above all on the show, which stimulates sales and promotes her collections. As was the case with her previous show, Hromova’s team completely altered the catwalk, adapting it to the show concept.
“When she was working on her collection, the designer used the technique of free association, introducing subconscious and paradoxical things,” reads her press release. “This bold attempt at immersion into the depths of consciousness has enabled the designer to find absolutely new methods for presenting her collection.”
This approach is in stark contrast to Gres’s commercial collection, which is obviously geared to the ordinary consumer. Inspired by her frequent flights to the United States when she was working on Janet Jackson’s costumes, she dedicated her collection to the US in the 1930s. A rather standard theme is played out in Gres’s line of jeans, Viktoria Gres Denim, and the image of a woman who acquires traces of masculinity when she wears severe vests and shirts, ties, and gangsters’ fedoras. Gres believes that a woman dressed like this is more attractive than one who wears a garment with a plunging neckline.
Iryna Karavay’s collection was different this time. Always spectacular, energetic, and impetuous, this year her line is mostly graphic, calm, and static. The rich colors that seem to burst out of fabrics and dresses are now replaced by conservative black and white, occasionally relieved by touches of mustard, emerald, and violet.
