The Ukrainian Fashion Week is now well in line with the global catwalk. The European fashion calendar places Kyiv immediately after the Paris Fashion Week preceeded by similar weeks in New York, Milan, and London. So the Ukrainian fashion event gets off to a start when the main European fashion capitals have already said their word and when the most asked-for item in the next autumn and winter collection is already known. Ukrainian trends fit in with global developments, but there are more and more talents among our designers who follow tendencies but, at the same time, are trying to display their individuality, life philosophy, and world outlook. For a trend is in fact quite an equivocal thing, and it is only the level of a designer that allows him or her to interpret, say, the now popular militaristic theme. There is an endless number of options here, and it is somewhere in the whirlwind of this artistic boundlessness that fashion comes closer to art.
It is traditionally believed that the first day of the Ukrainian Fashion Week is the “powerhouse.” This day attracts the greatest number of public personalities, and Ukrainian catwalk queens, such as Lilia Pustovit and Viktoria Hres, present their best collection on this very day. Also excelling in the fashion field is Olha Hromova who immediately made it to the “top league” after a few years’ break.
The 26th Ukrainian Fashion Week (UFW) is going to be a very unconventional event. On the one hand, it is to be opened with Lilia Pustovit’s show (it will be recalled that her art has shaped to a large extent the present-day Ukrainian fashion) which is particular not only by the impeccable quality of apparel but also by a special aura and atmosphere, and closed with a charitable project sponsored by the UFW and the Anti-AIDS foundation. Naturally, the week between the two events will have enough room for bold experiments, shocking behavior, and provocations, but what really matters for the UFW is its opening and closure. The point is that, on the one hand, many Ukrainian designers are gradually becoming “a thing in itself” and, on the other, the UFW is being increasingly drawn into social processes – it does not helplessly dilute itself in them but, on the contrary, gets cemented and pushes them up and forward.
It is quite easy to understand those who take a dim view of fashion. For the latter is really often responsible for this kind of attitude. But those who categorically reject all fashion-related things as limited ought to beware their own shortsightedness. For if you keep track of fashion trends, you will be able not only to see what women of fashion will be wearing in the next season but also to partially diagnose the condition of the society in which the designer works. But this can only be applied to those who never tire of developing themselves and who take interest in the surrounding world and their inner self.
Designer Fedir Vozianov and his latest collection affirm that “reclusion and self-concentration” are the prevailing conditions of today. This is also reflected by the colors of his collections: self-absorbing black and philosophical and closed gray. Incidentally, a similar attitude of mind also pervades the new collection of Lilia Pustovit who was inspired by the stone, a hero of the surrounding world which remains too conventional and, hence, underestimated for us. Stones caused the aforesaid self-absorbing mood (what can be more self-absorbing than the millennia-old mountains?) and built the overall color scheme – slow and pensive – from the jet black to the “moss-covered” green. As is always the case with Pustovit, her images are extremely feminine and even defenseless, but they exude a stone-like determination to perceive the essence of things and the world.
What seemed to be elevated to the absolute was the collection of Iryna Karavai, perhaps one of the most prominent collections this spring. A usually multifaceterd and too cheerful Karavai suddenly turned into a spiritual, if not pious, woman thanks to what her inspires – the architecture of ancient Kyiv and St. Sophia’s Cathedral. It is an extremely complicated collection which is, nevertheless, free of any excessive and obsessive details and looks flawless. It features the monochromic colors of the Kingdom of Heaven – clear white and light blue – and the aforesaid self-absorption in a gray gamut and a simple silhouette. A clear and well-balanced image.
But this is only one side of the interaction between fashion and art. The other side of the medal shows the moneyish grimaces of art. For instance, designers Svitlana Bevza and Olha Alionova presented, as part of the Fashion Week, the B.A.D. project that also involved a well-known contemporary artist Illia Chichkan. The project authors claim that the concept lies in the unity of the worlds of art and fashion. It is based on men’s and women’s T-shirts, on which the designers printed monkeys: it is now Chichkan’s blue chip.
We can see the unity of fashion and architecture in Iryna Karavai’s works and of fashion and painting in the B.A.D. project, but, although exalted art seems to be involved in both cases, this results in entirely different effects.
In contrast to the highest sphere, the political Olympus has always been quite accessible for Ukrainian fashion. The proof of this is that there is never a shortage of politicians in the first rows behind the catwalk. But sociopolitical matters as such have never interfered into the creative process so far – of course, if you do not take into account the crisis that crashed into the world of fashion a few seasons ago, which Oleksii Zalevsky reflected in his T-shirt logos. This time, two Ukrainian designers have dared to touch upon sensitive and controversial topics. Aliona Dats has associated her collection with NATO and Oksana Karavanska with the UPA.
Olena Dats’s “Euro-Atlantic collection” is the initiative of the Institute of World Politics which has made a conclusion that the NATO subject has gathered too much dust in bureaucrats’ office rooms and thus needs a fresh non-political look. The collection’s theme is quite clear, above all, from accessories that bear a four-point star (an emblem on the alliance’s flag). But there is a subtler point here – a two-sided cloth that symbolizes the two attitudes to NATO: realistic in the blue one (part of the NATO palette) and stereotypical in the black one.
“The movement towards European integration has various dimensions,” says Volodymyr Ohryzko, ex-foreign minister of Ukraine, who visited the show, “and this is one of the dimensions. For we should not discuss the NATO subject in straight terms only: we should seek other interesting and easy-to-grasp forms of explanation.”
“Today’s event is really far from politics. And for this very reason it will promote the understanding of what NATO is,” Georgia’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Grigol Katamadze, told The Day.
The Institute of World Politics is soon going to hold an auction to sell 10 exclusive apparels of the “Euro-Atlantic collection.” The raised funds will be used to organize a visit of some student leaders to the NATO headquarters and the European Commission. What also proved that the catwalk is not indifferent to what is going on in this country was the Oksana Karavanska’s collection devoted to UPA military romanticism. Naturally, how successfully the designer managed to elucidate this theme is open to debate. It is also debatable whether this somewhat simplified interpretation of this subject is for the better or for the worse. But the very fact that the “easy-going fashion” is trying to creep into far-from-glamorous guerrilla shelters and is seeking romantic role models in its own house (leaving aside Demi Moore and G.I. Jane) is already a signal that the ice has been broken. Now only up and forward!
The 26th Ukrainian Fashion Week finished last Tuesday. The final item of its main program was a joint project of the Ukrainian Fashion Week and Olena Franchuk’s Anti-AIDS foundation. Almost all the Ukrainian designers who participated in the UFW made a contribution to the charitable fashion parade. It will be recalled that more than 40 designers, both Ukrainian and foreign, presented their collections as part of the UFW. Read more in detail about this country’s main fashion event and the trends that designers offer for the 2010-11 autumn-winter season in one of The Day’s next issues.
