Ukrainian Fashion Week reminds me of a cult of imitation. Like savage tribespeople, our fashion world tries to conjure up the magic of the global fashion capitals, but only manages an embarrassing mutation, which is very far from the original.
On Oct. 14-19, Ukrainian Fashion Week will again present its traditional mix of celebrities, parties, drinking and, on the sideline, some clothes.
It will no doubt leave me asking my usual questions: Where is the fashion? Where is the actual creativity?
For many years, the Kyiv fashion crowd has been enthusiastically pretending that it is almost in Europe.
They have parties organized by this or that fashion magazine, where surgically enhanced faces smile and plant contact-free kisses on each other’s cheeks.
A model displays a creation from the ready-to-wear collection by popular Ukrainian designer Oleksiy Zalevsky during a Ukrainian Fashion Week show in Kyiv on Oct.12, 2007. (AFP)
The crowd mingles, and their photos get printed in the lifestyle chronicles.
Then come the shows with skinny girls on a catwalk wearing something (it doesn’t matter what). There are television cameras, hellos and more fake embraces.
There is little to speak of in terms of media contacts, and the whole thing is carelessly organized.
It’s not even worth mentioning the mass theft of ideas from Western designers.
From the technical point of view, Ukrainian Fashion Week should be renamed Ukrainian Tailor Shop Week because none of the things that appear on the podium will have 10 copies made, let alone 100.
None of them is made at factories, as they should be, but rather handmade by seamstresses in workshops – and this is not an advantage.
The people attending this event are not buyers hunting for designs to commission, but celebrities, socialites and people whose appearance screams bad taste.
In the best-case scenario, some of them will visit a designer’s studio to commission a dress or a suit – that would create the highpoint of a designer’s career.
A model displays an outfit from the collection of designer Eduard Nasyrov during the Ukrainian Fashion Week 2009 show in Kyiv on Oct. 16, 2009. (AFP)
Nobody needs clothes from the catwalk. A designer tries in vain to sell them to the few Kyiv boutiques, but nobody wants to buy them because their production cost is enormous.
The high end price is a reflection of the hand work by seamstresses. The clothes have not been produced at a factory because the designer fears his inability to sell the stuff later.
Why is he afraid? Because deep down he knows the true fashion value of his work.
I don’t want to name and shame any of the fashion artists. But everything wreaks repetition, second-grade quality and provinciality.
Just look at the working language of this whole glossy show – it’s Russian, of course. Why bother with Ukrainian?
We haven’t even got fashion critics who could say: “Sorry, sweetheart, but this collection is 90 percent borrowed from early Vivienne Westwood.” In other words, this is something they will chinwag about, and that’s it.
Nobody says anything offensive to anyone – the crowd is very small, everyone knows each other and don’t want to bicker, spoil their relationships and upset such pleasant people.
This is a nice – if false – little world.
Most Ukrainian designers are really nice people. But they have nothing to do with fashion.
They think that simple jersey trousers and a hoodie are designer clothes. It would be bearable if the quality matched that of young U.S. designer Alexander Wang’s work or if their prices were comparable to those in Zara stores.
But they cost as much if they were made by Wang, and the quality is questionable.
And again, they were handmade, not factory-made, and that’s a drawback.
And then, there are t-shirts. Everyone who likes to call themselves a designer thinks it’s their duty to produce a line of t-shirts. Of course, it has to be a limited edition – exclusive, cheeky and radical.
The cheekyness, however, is reserved to the pricing policy.
For example, my little shop that specializes in selling young designers’ clothes from the U.K., was once offered grey t-shirts with a print from one well-known Ukrainian artist.
To give you a hint, he’s the painter who toyed with images of close relatives of Homo sapiens at one point in his career.
The t-shirts were supposed to cost a mere Hr 500 ($60). We had to turn them down with a refined excuse: “It does not quite fit our concept.”
Other designers play the game using “eco-bags” – those canvas bags that you often get for free in Europe when you make a big purchase.
They sell those here because they’re designer-made, with original print, and good for the environment.
I don’t want to say that everything is so bad.
There are many talented designers that are trying to make it happen. It’s sad that even the talented ones still have to develop their brand with a small workshop of five to 10 seamstresses, a dozen rich clients and with some 15 meters of fabric.
To be honest, I don’t even know how to fix it. Perhaps to cease chanting spells to imitate, and begin instead to create?
Tatyana Kremen is the owner of Pure boutique in the center of Kyiv, which specializes in clothes and accessories from young British designers. For details: www.pure.kiev.ua.
