Ukrainian Fashion Week has been taking place since 1997, but this fall the country's most important fashion event was on the edge of being cancelled.
The usual sequence of fashion shows and parties scheduled for Oct. 15-19 will take place “against all odds,” according to Oleksandr Sokolovsky, the UFW co-founder.
The organizers complained that due to Ukraine’s harsh political situation the fashion week felt a serious shortage of sponsors to support the event. Also, the Ukrainian designers’ sales are down, Sokolovsky revealed.
Still, 36 fashion shows featuring the spring-summer collections of 2015 will take place in the
Mystetsky Arsenal, the official hosting venue of UFW, this October.
“We can’t set a favorable investment climate in Ukraine, we can’t stop war, but we do want to show that Ukrainian fashion business is alive and there are clients, who buy the Ukrainian fashion product,” Sokolovsky said.
All five
days there will be several fashion spaces settled at the Mystetsky Arsenal,
showcasing “installations on border of art and fashion,” according to Iryna Danylevska,
the head of the UFW organizing committee.
The fashion week will open with a screening of Bertrand Bonello’s “Saint Laurent” movie in Oscar theater on Oct. 14. Later
the invited guests will have a chance to attend the presentation of Iryna Karavay’s new collection and join the cocktail party in Buddha Bar.
The last
day of UFW will be dedicated to five
new designers who never participated in the fashion week before. Among them, there will be Yana Chervinska, Lara Qvint, Taras Volyn, Lesya Loznevaya, Anna Poteshkina, Yana Belyayeva, who was recently “discovered” during the Odessa Fashion Week, Anna Zabelina from Belarus, and many others.
Another one of the UFW projects will feature designers
from Georgia and Czech Republic who were invited to make fashion presentations at the Georgia Art Fashion space and Czech Art Fashion Space.
The
educational part of the UFW will be complied with the lecture about
fashion-illustration by Richard Kilroy, famous fashion illustrator from UK, who
contributes to Christian Dior, Homme Style, Topshop and many other fashion
houses worldwide.
Another
lecture by Liana Bilyakevych, Ukrainian fashion analyst, will be about
the tendencies of the post-crisis fashion and the fashion industry in 2015.
The ELLE
Fashion Film festival will also have its spot in Mystetsky Arsenal on Oct. 17.
It will be followed by the lecture of the Ukrainian film director, Ihor
Stekolenko.
An invitation will be required to attend the Mystetsky Arsenal during the fashion week. Invitations are issued by the designers and can be requested from their offices.
