On Sept. 2, designers presented a new collection of clothes at Ukrainian Fashion Week in Kyiv. But this wasn’t your standard haute couture fare. Instead, these outfits were meant to be worn by Ukraine’s public utilities workers.
They were the result of a joint project of Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko and Ukrainian Fashion Week.
“The city initiated and started implementing this project so that the utilities worker of the capital would have beautiful, stylish and comfortable work clothes. I appealed to the organizing committee of Ukrainian Fashion Week with the idea to ‘disguise’ employees of the city’s utilities,” the mayor’s press service quoted Klitschko as saying.
The main goal of creating this collection was to find new ways to make the uniform as comfortable as possible for people who spend most of their day in it.
A new collection of clothes for Ukrainian utilities workers, presented by designers at Ukrainian Fashion Week in Kyiv, is aimed to be comfortable and stylish. (Artem Surov)
At the Ukrainian Fashion Week show, uniforms were displayed for employees of the metro; ambulance doctors; the Municipal Guard; Kyivpastrans, a municipal company that operates public transport; and Kyivzelenbud, the municipal association for landscaping.
Four Ukrainian designers who already have experience in creating collections in the style of work uniforms designed the new uniforms for communal service workers: Volodymyr Demchynskyi, founder of the Dastish Fantastish clothing brand; Yadviga Netyksha, a Ukrainian designer; Sofia Rousinovich, founder of the Roussin brand; and Kyrylo Kharytontsev, founder of Kir-Khartley clothing brand.
Yadviga Netyksha received two main awards in the EPSON DIGITAL FASHION-2019 competition within the framework of Ukrainian Fashion Week. What’s more, she created the Yadviga Netyksha Capsule 20-2 collection using digital textile printing technology.
“If these (uniform) collections are selected for further work, designers will need to design clothes directly, taking into account all the technical requirements,” Netyksha said.
On Sept. 2, designers presented a new collection of clothes for Ukrainian utilities workers at Ukrainian Fashion Week in Kyiv as a result of the joint project of Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko and Ukrainian Fashion Week. (Mark Sosiak)
Rousinovich says that fashion must solve social problems, and the designer must help society, not only bring beauty to the world.
Rousinovich has a personal interest in creating the collection of clothes for public utility workers.
Six months ago, the designer met an ambulance doctor, who was complaining about his uniform. She decided to help him. Rousinovich planned to organize a fashion show directly dedicated to municipal services. And, just then, Vitali Klitschko offered her to join this project.
Rousinovich says that her mother also took part in creating the collection.
“Since we did not have time to make everything on time, my mother started making pockets for the ambulance (uniform). Because this was just the most important part of the entire look, since I wanted to make a collection with a large number of removable pockets at different levels.”
Rousinovich said that the uniforms will now move to a museum and will be displayed there as art objects.
