Five days of endless catwalks, hundreds of super-skinny models with outlandish makeup and thousands of guests in striking outfits – that’s what the 30th Ukrainian Fashion Week looked like at first glance.
But the fashion show should also be much more: a platform for designers to sell their ideas, make money off it and improve our everyday wardrobe.
It seems Ukrainian Fashion Week, which ran through March 18, is finally moving in that direction. The show had a record number of foreign buyers assessing designer collections for fall-winter 2012-2013 – a total of seven. The number may not sound impressive, but for some designers it was.
“Just three years ago the word ‘buyer’ was virtually unheard of at our fashion week,” says Svetlana Bevza, whose summer collection had commissions coming from Ukraine, Russia, Montenegro, the U.S. and Britain. It was dominated by knee-length light-colored dresses, and plastic elements.
This time, her trademark cuts of complex shapes were used to create heavy-looking clothes in dark colors, with many leather elements built in.
Dress by Julia Aysina presented during Ukrainian Fashion Week
Ekaterina Petukhova, managing director of Russia’s Esper Group, was one of the buyers who commissioned styles from Bevza and her fellow designer Lilya Poustovit after the last Ukrainian Fashion Week, a bi-annual event. Their summer collections sold well in a luxury boutique in Porto Montenegro, where affluent public likes to spend their holidays.
Petukhova was pleased with the number of buyers as much as the designers. “In terms of buyers’ presence, Ukrainian Fashion Week is the best one in Eastern Europe,” she says.
The situation with buyers changed three seasons ago, when Ukrainian Fashion Week started an international program and began actively inviting buyers.
Models backstage at Olena Dats
This time, buyers from Galeries Lafayette in France and Tsvetnoy Central Market in Moscow came to assess the collections.
“It would be much harder to get buyers like that to visit individual shows. Thankfully, now the Fashion Week organizers are doing it,” Bevza says.
But her colleague Victoria Gres says organizers fail to meet her expectations.
“Unfortunately, the Ukrainian Fashion Week fails to fulfill its main function of connecting designers and buyers,” she said, adding that the few contacts with buyers that the designers have are only thanks to their personal effort.
Svetlana Volnova (from left) and Alyona Vinnytska with her husband during Ukrainian Fashion Week
Petukhova says the presence of buyers is not going to pay off fast. “It is very important for buyers to see the designer [they like] is developing and has a good background. So if the buyers are interested, they usually come to see the designer’s show a few times,” she says. “Whenever buyers start working with a designer, they risk either money or their position. And they need some guarantees.”
What the foreign buyers are looking for is novelty, Petukhova says. “What everyone wants to see is something new. But it should also be something that goes along with world trends,” she says.
On top of novelty, buyers check the designer’s competence. After all, they don’t want to risk a shipment of dresses each worth Hr 3,000-4,000, like Poustovit’s diffusion line, for example. Bezva’s primary collection sells for Hr 2,000-5,500 on average.
Make-up artists prepare models, backstage at Olena Dats
Mass production is still a problem for Ukrainian designers, most of whom only have small workshops. Expanding their business is a tough task now, when potential investors prefer safer havens.
According to Petukhova, the buildup of a new designer’s name may take up to 10 years of investing. In this, Ukraine is not unique. Some designers also have to teach to make ends meet.
Those include Maria Gambina, a fashion designer from Portugal, and Pavel Brejcha of Oldschool brand from Czech Republic. Others work as private stylists and graphic designers to supplement their income.
They prefer to do that and stay independent, rather than bring an outside investor to the company. “Indeed, it can happen that once investors are involved into a designer’s business, they try to impact what the designer produces. And then there comes a moment when the designer no longer controls what is released under his name,” Petukhova says.
Bright colours highlited fall-winter collections, though most of designers kept to black, grey and beige
The other local problem is a multitude of talentless designers who are supported by their wealthy families. “It can fill runways with something absolutely unimaginable that shouldn’t be there,” Petukhova says.
Foreign buyers looked impressed with what they saw this spring, but were careful about making predictions how many of over 40 Ukrainian designers taking part in the show will win commissions.
Geraldine Florin from Gallerie Lafayette says that even the number of buyers that Ukrainian Fashion Week has managed to attract might not be enough to make a financial difference.
That’s a problem for all fashion weeks, except the four major ones in Paris, London, Milan and New York. “[But] I must say I would put Kyiv’s fashion week right after those four leaders because of what I’ve seen here,” she says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at rudenko@kyivpost.com.
– Photos by Kostyantyn Chernichkin
