Thousands of years ago, an unmarried Ukrainian woman had poppy flowers embroidered on her white vyshyvanka as a symbol of solitude. But for a woman in modern Ukraine, the ornament would hardly spark any associations with the single life — the logo of the Tinder dating app would do the job much better.
But nobody would actually embroider images as trivial as Tinder’s flame on a linen piece. Or would they?
This bold move was one of the many experiments local vyshyvanka brand Etnodim went for in its recent collection, with an ambitious goal of rethinking the modern Ukrainian identity.
Released days before Vyshyvanka Day, on May 17, the capsule collection reinvents the traditional costume, using symbols to which the Ukrainians of today can relate.
Framed into a thoughtful campaign with a touching nostalgic video, the collection struck a chord with many Ukrainians. The pieces are now close to selling out, according to Etnodim’s founder Andriy Cherukha, while the promo has attracted more than a million views.
“We made a big contribution to the perception and understanding of the vyshyvanka. We showed that vyshyvanka is no longer about the traditional symbolism of black for sorrow and red for love,” Cherukha told the Kyiv Post.
Business and brand
Etnodim emerged in 2008, just as the e-commerce business was taking off in Ukraine.
Back then, Cherukha was a student studying in Ostroh, a town in western Rivne Oblast. He noticed that though vyshyvankas were in high demand, there was little choice on the market. That’s why his girlfriend used to bring embroidered pieces for her Ostroh friends from her hometown of Kolomyia, an area famous for folk crafts.
Seeing an opportunity for business, Cherukha founded Etnodim, first operating as an online retailer of those same artisanal vyshyvankas from Kolomyia. They were ordered from all across Ukraine, he says.
The sales grew steadily and a few years later, Cherukha set out to conquer the Ukrainian capital, moving to Kyiv and opening Etnodim’s first physical store here.
Soon after that, the company decided to reach for a new height and design the first vyshyvankas of its own design, slightly more casual than their counterparts that are hand-crafted in western Ukraine.
“We wanted to create something that people would wear every day,” Cherukha says.
The decision could not be timelier. Ukraine was on the verge of a new wave of patriotism. The 2013–2014 EuroMaidan Revolution that unseated President Viktor Yanukovych was about to unfold and start the revival of all things Ukrainian. Many started to use their wardrobe as an opportunity for a pro-Ukrainian statement, and Etnodim’s pieces fit the idea perfectly.
The company produced high-quality linen garments for women, men and children, digging into the folklore and using the traditional embroidery ornaments of plants, flowers and animals.
The pieces proved to be a hit, pushing Etnodim to grow to a team of nearly 45 people and move to a spacier store and office in the Podil district.
The founder of Ukrainian brand Etnodim Andriy Cherukha holds an embroidered vyshyvanka shirt, as he speaks with the Kyiv Post at his company’s store in Kyiv on May 25, 2021. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Though the company was widely known for its products, it never had a recognizable brand, identity or even logo. So in 2020, amid Ukraine’s growing market of creative agencies, Cherukha decided to fix that.
The result was the collaboration with the Drama Queen marketing agency and its head Anna Goncharova, who previously worked with local leaders like Kachorovska footwear manufacturer and mobile taxi service Uklon.
“When Etnodim came to me, they had grown to the point that they needed to become a brand,” Goncharova told the Kyiv Post.
But what was supposed to be a big project just for Etnodim ended up bringing value to the whole of Ukraine.
No mystery
The campaign started with a video that asks a question “What is your vyshyvanka about?”
The answer is a recollection of pivotal moments in Ukrainian history, defining poem and song lines, significant cartoons and TV programs and even local dishes familiar to everyone from a school canteen. Compiling archive and news footage, the piece is narrated by a woman who appears in similar backgrounds as if walking through old memories.
There is a clip of the raising of the Ukrainian flag symbolizing independence. Another one shows a family at Independence Square during the EuroMaidan Revolution. One more features ex-President Leonid Kuchma’s New Years’ address alongside his grandson and dog — a silly moment Ukrainians remember. There are also the turbulent 1990s, school proms and vacationing in Crimea.
The promo doesn’t feature all the symbols that were used on Etnodim’s new vyshyvankas, but that wasn’t the purpose. Nostalgic, touching and deeply intimate, the video speaks to every Ukrainian’s heart, pushing them to reflect on their past and present.
“This is what my vyshyvanka is about,” the narrator says at the end of the video. The quote is also the title of the whole campaign.
The collection features nine designs including two dresses and seven shirts, two of them unisex and the rest for women, since it’s the core audience of Etnodim. The prices range from Hr 2,600 ($93) to 4,600 ($164).
From afar, the garments resemble old-school vyshyvankas with ornaments traditionally embroidered along the sleeves and around the collar. Instead of common patterns symbolizing harvest, livestock and other things that were meaningful then and are meaningless now, there are some unexpected but easily recognizable images.
“Ornaments are no longer mysterious,” Etnodim’s campaign web page reads.
One of the designs called “Zvistka” (“News” in Ukrainian) weaves together the old symbol of good news, the swallow, and the modern one, that of social media notifications represented by Instagram’s logo.
The “Crimea” design pays respect to the Russian-occupied territory that is yet an essential part of modern Ukraine’s history and identity. It features big flowers with their middle part shaped as the map of the Crimean peninsula. “Nezalezhni” (“Independent”) incorporates the date of Ukraine’s Independence Day in the ornament. “Kashtan” (“Chestnut”) represents Kyiv and the tree that has grown to be the main city symbol.
The most challenging design to develop was “Slovo” (“Word”), named after an apartment building in the eastern city Kharkiv, where prominent Ukrainian writers lived in the 1920–1930s. Many of them fell victims to Joseph Stalin’s repressions and were the first in a whole generation of killed artists known as Executed Renaissance.
The design took three weeks to complete, Etnodim’s designer Anna Fesenko told the Kyiv Post. “I began digging into the information and understood that each writer and poet that lived there needs to be portrayed through a specific symbol,” she says.
A cherry symbolizes humorist Ostap Vyshnya, since that’s what his last name means in Ukrainian. Writer Mykola Khvylovy is represented by waves, or “khvyli” in Ukrainian.
The Slovo shirt differs from a traditional vyshyvanka both in style and composition. The symbols are scattered across a beige or black shirt, resembling tattoos. The shirt was also made unisex, showing that Slovo was home to both men and women.
“The idea was very non-standard,” Fesenko says. “Now, Slovo is one of the campaign’s most popular designs,” Cherukha says.
According to Cherukha, there is a growing trend of bringing attention to the Ukrainian identity — the rise of folk music is one of the many examples — and Etnodim’s campaign is another such attempt.
“We have also gotten on this wave,” he says. “ This is our identity, which separates us from other countries.”
Much love
Etnodim’s campaign experimented with something many Ukrainians consider sacred, a piece of clothing they often use to dress up on special occasions like Independence Day, wedding and birthday celebrations.
Because of vyshyvanka’s cultural significance, the team anticipated mixed reactions, with the conservative population rejecting their ideas.
But the response exceeded all expectations. The video went viral with thousands of Ukrainians sharing it online. The collection’s popularity naturally followed and it is almost sold out by now.
“I have never received so much love, nor have I seen another client receive as much love as Etnodim got,” Goncharova says.
The team believes that it was their personal touch that caused such a strong reaction.
“(People) took it as an intimate thing, as if we guessed something which for them is very personal, but also felt part of a shared experience, living through it as a community,” Goncharova says.
Since its birth 13 years ago, Etnodim has sought to show Ukrainians that vyshyvankas can be an everyday garment, but this campaign proved it can also be a relevant, timely and deeply personal piece.
“There is a phrase that art is the reflection of everyday life, and with this campaign, we showed that a vyshyvanka is the reflection of our every day,” Cherukha says. “We are going to keep doing that.”
