The Week is Now Six Days Long

From October 2 to 8 Kyiv will host the Eleventh Fashion Seasons Ukrainian Pret-a-porter Week. The Fashion Seasons of fall-winter 2002-2003 will assemble best Ukrainian designers and will take place, as it happened more than once, at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Ukraine and the Lavra arts gallery. Its organizers, RIA Yanko, Yeva magazine, and Serhiy Byzov Fashion House, this time prolonged the Seasons to six days so that as many fashion designers and trade marks as possible got a chance to demonstrate their pret-a-porter collections. Naturally, biggest attention will be drawn by already renowned Oleksiy Zalevsky, Viktor Anysymov, Oleksandr Hapchuk, Olha Hromova, Hanna Babenko, Liliya Pustovit, et. al., but no less promising are the collections of the Seasons’ debutants Diana Dorozhkina, specializing in leather and suede clothes, or Oksana Tymonyna (stylist of the television New Channel who works on the costumes for the Tomorrow Will Be Tomorrow TV series). Young designer Vania Ren is also a debutant, however, far from being a freshman. He worked with [film director] Kira Muratova and as a stylist in the videos of many Ukrainian singers.

Speaking of major news of the dull season, the changes in Oleksandr Hapchuk’s professional activities deserve special mention. Now he works as an independent designer in his own atelier. Using best fabrics and modern sewing techniques will help him to achieve a qualitatively new level. However, even after his resignation the Stolychny Consumers’ House did not lose its place on the Kyiv fashion map. In Oleksandr’s place there came young but already well-known in the professional circles designers, Olesia Unita and Svitlana Berezhna, laureates of the latest Fashion Seasons: Look to the Future contest. Oleksandr Zalevsky and Viktor Anysymov hold negotiations with Krystyna Barbara, director general of the SENSUS firm, during the dull season. They agreed to create a joint production line. Meanwhile, Liliya Pustovit went even further to the West. Now she is negotiating sales of her designs in Germany with representatives of a conceptual German boutique.

Soon an international seminar on fashion journalism is to take place in Ukraine. Representatives from Russia, France, Latvia and other countries have already given their consent to participate. Besides, this spring Moscow will host a show of Ukrainian designers’ collections, which they should approach fully armed. Russian public is well versed in fashion. And so is the Ukrainian one.