Ukrainian Fashion Week has ended. A glittering show is over, and the red carpet at the entrance will be rolled up neatly until next time. It’s time to sum up the results. On the positive side, Ukrainian Fashion Week proved to be capable of showcasing fashion designers who are no longer torn between Fashion Seasons and the Kyiv Podium. But what did the designers get as a result? An enchanting show with a huge budget ended with prestige, advertising, and a few new customers.
For four days there was a show room on Brovarsky Prospekt in Kyiv where you could view and buy something from designers’ new collections or the Fall-Winter 2007 season. Although admission was free, everybody was looking forward to welcoming buyers, who purchase clothing for boutiques. In fact, their presence always attests to the development of a fashion industry, so desired by Ukrainian designers.
“A fashion industry means your collection is made, put into circulation, and you are busy designing the next one,” says designer Victoria Hres. “In our country everything is different. The one who designs clothes has to sell it himself. It’s not a fashion industry but a self-delusion. The designers’ art has nothing to do with business.”
There is no established system, and even so Ukrainians are in no hurry to buy clothing from Ukrainian designers. It is not even so much the fact that a tailored jacket may cost between 500 and 600 USD, not the highest possible price. The fact is, it is easier for our people to remember the names of famous Western fashion designers than Ukrainian ones. Of course, for boutiques it is more profitable to sell world brands, in which millions of dollars have been invested.
But our designers are not rushing to go abroad. “Do you think they need us out there? They are protecting their own market. And to build one’s name in the West is not realistic,” says Hres emphatically.
Our designers are much more interested in neighboring countries, like Russia. Fashion Week is about to start in Moscow, and many Ukrainian designers are going to show their collections there.
Russians who have visited Ukraine speak quite favorably about our world of fashion. “Ukrainian designers are crafting brilliant, unique clothing. They have good taste and the courage to go against the current. I don’t want to offend anybody, but in Moscow they have started making identical-looking clothing,” says designers Oleksii Borodulin, who took part in Ukrainian Fashion Week. “Many directors of large companies have noted that the level of Ukrainian designers’ mastery is rising. This automatically means that the industry is rising.”
Nevertheless, Ukrainian designers think it’s too soon to speak about any industry. According to the organizers of Ukrainian Fashion Week, Ukrainian fashion is mid-way between a brilliant show and creating an industry. It’s no secret that making clothes for the mass consumer is more difficult, but it’s probably every designer’s dream. The lack of a fixed system of distribution and middlemen is still an obstacle.
At the same time, the market level is rising. “Recently my girls visited the market, and they say you can buy an item of clothing by Mark Jacobs for about 700 hryvnias, even though he has always been an elite designer,” Hres says. “What an advanced market we have! It means people are reading magazines and monitoring the scene — that’s where the industry is.”
