Seeing men in vyshyvankas (Ukrainian traditional embroidered shirts) or ladies with blue-and-yellow ribbons in their hair no longer means its Independence Day or that you’ve landed in the middle of an anti-Russian language protest. Ukrainian national symbols are increasingly becoming a trend in modern Ukrainian fashion.
The country’s best known fashion designer Lilia Pustovit, whose latest collection includes many elements of national embroidery, said the trend is driven more by a need for identity than patriotism. “Now there are much more people with Ukrainian self-identification. It’s still not patriotism, but people go abroad and come back more and more patriotic,” she said.
It’s certainly true for Daria Antsybor, 23, a folklorist who said she wears traditional dresses all the time, but particularly when abroad.
“I think people I met during my volunteer program in France this summer will remember the colors of Ukrainian flag forever,” she laughed and said her colleagues joked about her even having shoelaces in national colors. “I feel comfortable in such clothes and do not worry at all. It suits almost everything,” she explained, adding that national symbols should be used correctly according to their meaning, not just fashion.
“For me it is not about fashion,” said Kyiv-based system administrator Maksym Krasilnikov, 30. “It is a way to express my inner appearance, just like T-shirts with the picture of a favorite band. A way to show who is who,” he said. Krasilnikov said his favorite is a black embroidered shirt, T-shirts with national symbols and of course, the national flag. “I travel a lot and take our flag everywhere with me. I recently took it to Georgia,” he said.
The trend really took off after the Euro 2012 football championship. People wearing embroidered shirts and T-shirts, blue-and-yellow hats, ribbons and bags with national flags in their hands flooded the streets of Ukraine throughout summer 2012. And Ukrainian designers caught the wave. “I prepared my collection of flag-colored skirts during Euro 2012 and it took me no more than 3 days,” said Ukrainian designer Alyona Poklonska.
She made the first long skirt of national flag colors for herself, just for a football match, but then saw the attention it attracted and thought the idea had potential. Poklonska set up her own ethnic design studio in Kyiv and said the number of clients keeps on growing.
“I have my new shop not far from school and much more parents now come with their children to buy ethnic clothes, rather than rent (them) for a day or two for an event,” she claimed. Poklonska said people used to buy a lot as presents, but now “many people choose clothes with ethnic elements they can wear every day and this is a big progress.”
For Natalia Nagorska, an IT sector worker, wearing ethnically themed clothes is a way to stand out from the crowd rather than a way to show patriotic feelings, though national spirit is certainly behind the trend.
“I am sure Ukrainian designers should work with such national elements,” she said, “Of course first of all the idea will be supported by patriots and nationalists but then the others will follow,” she explained.
Nagorska fell in love with the trend in Lviv, where even monuments were dressed in embroidered shirts during the Independence Day celebrations. “It amazed me! So many beautiful things with national symbolic and ethnic elements that you can use every day,” she said, “Then my boyfriend gave me a backpack with Ukrainian embroidery for my birthday and now it is my favorite one. And believe me or not, no handbag caused such admiration among my colleagues as this backpack,” said Nagorska.
While fashion experts and designers still doubt that Ukrainian national symbols can rival the trendiness of British and American ones, others are optimistic. “I am not sure it can happen very soon, but the tendency is clear,” said designer Poklonska. “At least I am working and will be working in that direction,” she said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected]
