Let’s start with some statistics. According to Ukrainian Fashion Week’s press center, this year 43 designers took part in the week-long fashion extravaganza, with nearly 180 accredited journalists, including representatives of the foreign mass media (Germany’s Euronews, press agencies and newspapers from Slovakia, Belgium, Finland, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, and Russia). Each season journalists at home and abroad are paying increasingly more attention to our Fashion Week.
However, the organizers are somewhat dissatisfied with the quality of the coverage by Ukrainian journalists. “Owing to circumstances,” reporters who write about fashion often confuse the season’s collections and misuse fashion terminology. To correct this, the organizing committee of Ukrainian Fashion Week conducts regular seminars to explain the finer points and details of the fashion industry to journalists.
GERMINATION OF THE UKRAINIAN FASHION INDUSTRY
The reputation of Ukrainian fashion is growing, primarily among Ukrainians, thanks mostly to the organizers, who are going to a lot of effort for Ukrainians to accept their fashions and designers not only as an element of middle class life but also as a national gain. Such cultural achievements spell economic gains as well, bringing great financial dividends to the state treasury.
But this happens only when fashion acquires the status of an industry, when light industry factories are working (ours are not at the moment). Only when light industry starts working normally will Ukrainian designers be able to enter the wider fashion market and not be limited to working only for select clients. This process has already begun not thanks to but in spite of the current situation, with Lilia Poustovit (Poustovit Weekend), Iryna Karavai (NB Karavay), and Viktoria Hres (Viktoria Gres Denim) launching their second lines.
Besides her main collection, Oksana Karavanska also presented clothing from her OK by Oksana Karavanska line and her children’s clothing line OK’IDS. Olha Hromova is busy with decor, whereas designer Anna Bublyk has created three additional lines: denim, accessories, and a sports line, which were not showcased during this year’s Ukrainian Fashion Week.
Iryna Karavai launched her second line last season. The designer says that it’s too early to talk about the commercial success of her latest collection. “Things are selling well, but it’s too soon to speak about 100-percent commercial success because all these projects are long-term,” Karavai explained. “This is a period of trial and error for us because we are learning about large production, arranging contacts, and fine-tuning things.”
The emergence of the first professional buyer in Ukraine, which is developing its own network of brand shops called Yellow&Blue, is an important event in our developing fashion industry. The company is signing agreements with designers, such as Oleksii Zalevsky, Natalia Hlazkova, Olena Dats, Svitlana Bevza, Viktor Anisimov, and Iryna Karavai, to create single collections produced in limited numbers and sell them in its network of stores. This set-up is unique for Ukraine but a given in the rest of the world. Stores have opened in Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Kryvy Rih, and Donetsk, soon to be followed by Odesa, Kyiv, Zaporizhia, and Kharkiv.
UKRAINIAN FASHION WEEK’S INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
In order to get an objective and unbiased assessment of the state of Ukrainian fashion and its international prospects, this year the organizers invited some foreign experts. Hilary Alexander, the fashion director of The Daily Telegraph (UK) came to familiarize herself with Ukraine and its fashion industry, and to organize a photo shoot of Kyiv for her paper with photographer John Swannell, one of Britain’s 10 top photographers.
In her interview with the organizers of Ukrainian Fashion Week, Alexander explained that she knows about Ukraine from Eurovision and the president’s wife, Kateryna Yushchenko, whom she met at the showing of Jean Paul Gaultier Fall/Winter 2005-06 collection, which he dedicated to Ukraine.
“I think that when a country is working out its national identity, it is no less important to form a fashion identity the same way,” said Alexander. “Judging from what I have seen, you are doing everything the right way.”
Another British fashion critic, Godfrey Deeny, the editor of the Web site www.fashionwiredaily.com, considers Ukraine to be a promising market, although unlike Alexander, he had never heard about our Fashion Week. He believes that Ukrainian designers should orient themselves more toward international trends.
“I would like to see more ideas of conceptual art in Ukrainian fashion. Ethnic motifs are a fresh look, but you should not just think about your unique identity.”
For the last three years our designers have been showcased in the Italian magazine Collezioni, which publishes photo reports on the world’s leading fashion weeks. Getting 32 to 36 pages of coverage in Collezioni dedicated to Ukrainian Fashion Week is no small feat, because to get into this magazine a designer’s collections should be high-quality and original, and reflect the season’s main trends. But getting a collection showcased in the Italian fashion magazine does not come cheaply.
“I cannot name the price because this is between the designers and Collezioni. But I would not emphasize this point because this information does not prove anything,” said Oleksii Danylevsky, the coordinator of international relations for Ukrainian Fashion Week.
“As for cooperation, I can say that it is important to place a collection in a magazine that is internationally distributed and enjoys great authority, because Collezioni has been publishing for several decades, and it is the most complete photo report on the world’s fashion weeks. It helps buyers, stylists, and those who deal with the many multi-brand boutiques. The fact that Ukrainian fashions are represented there does not mean that we are trendsetters, but we are setting out on this road,” he said.
Danylevsky says that it is very significant that the Italian magazine focuses on a particular Ukrainian collection. “But a designer featured in the magazine must be ready to be a business participant in the pret-a-porter fashion week, as well as be ready to make copies and adapt. By the way, that’s how the Viktoria Gres Collection was noticed, and one of her pieces was copied for one of the world’s top celebrities (Janet Jackson — Ed.).”
This fashion expert is convinced that Collezioni will feature up to 25 Ukrainian collections, including some by our youngest designers.
The international nature of Ukrainian Fashion Week is bolstered by the fact that designers from other countries come to Kyiv to showcase their fashions. This was the Georgian designer Avtandil Tskvitnidze’s fifth visit to Ukraine. Ukrainian women like the subtlety and European quality of his collections. Germany’s Annette Goertz, who presented her third collection in Ukraine, creates relaxed and comfortable clothing. Russia’s Svetlana Tegin and her retro style collections have been sold in Ukraine for some time. These foreign designers work in absolutely different styles, and they are quite popular among our young consumers.
The young designers in the traditional New Names shows include those who are living, studying, or working abroad. Designer Vincent Willem Warner works for a Chinese company, while Olesia Makhonko, a student of the famous popularizer of the lowered waistline, Alexander McQueen, owns a boutique in London. According to Iryna Danylevska, the head of the organizing committee of Ukrainian Fashion Week, the younger generation of Ukrainian designers, who were raised in totally different conditions than their predecessors, is primarily oriented toward the commercial success of their collections rather than self-realization.
But Artem Klymchuk only partly agrees with this statement. “All Ukrainian designers, not just the young ones, want to sell their collections. So they are churning out clothing lines. I call this the “trade mark fashion parade,” or construction collections. But there are designers who think not only about sales but about fashion. I personally do not make collections to sell them afterwards. Of course, I want to sell them, but at the moment of creation I’m not thinking about whether they will sell. But they are, and that is very gratifying. My next collection will be a strictly commercial one.”
It is difficult for Klymchuk to say why his generation differs from the previous one. “Maybe the older designers were more committed. But the new designers I saw this time are quite committed to their school, but they have a rather limited vision. Unfortunately, this is not Paris or Europe, and I would like to see someone like Gareth Pugh here. Designers of this level won’t appear soon in Ukraine.”
After this rather discouraging fashion prediction about the creativity of Ukrainian designers, Klymchuk told The Day what fashion lovers should be wearing this fall and winter, and the hot looks for next spring and summer.
TRENDS
1. Architectural forms: “architectural” cut of outer clothing and jackets, with correspondingly rough cloth will be used as well as sculptural elements.
2. All shades of gray in all types of clothing.
3. Ethnic motifs: gypsy, Nepalese, and Indian, with corresponding combinations of colors and embroidery.
4. Jazz: the 1920s will be hot as well as straight silhouettes with lowered waistlines, sequins, disks, and stones.
Klymchuk says that next spring and summer fashionistas should get ready for fringes, bright colors, translucent fabrics, narrow silhouettes, leggings, animal prints, and very high heels.
INCIDENTALLY
Full-fledged war
As part of the cooperation between Ukrainian Fashion Week and Olena Franchuk’s Anti-AIDS Foundation, a fashion auction was held under the slogan “World War III has begun.” Thirty-three designers as well as designer duos (called the AIDS Army Fashion) took part in the project that was held this year after its absence from last year’s Fashion Week. Each designer created a single military image.
Politicians and celebrities traditionally take part in this show. The money raised from the auction will go to purchase mobile clinics for children’s hospitals, where HIV-positive children receive treatment.
