In Search of a Russian Style

Russian style and fashion

Pre-reading:

Please match the words on the left with the correct meaning on the right.

Bling a characteristic

To cater to create

Plunging neckline Widely or commonly occurring

Ornate Elaborately and heavily decorated

Prevalent a dress with a low front (eg‘The dress has a plunging neckline’)

Excessive to bring together, to join together

Stark a driver for someone else

To embroider Luxurious, has too much of everything, costly

To unify too much of something

Trait very flashy, showy jewellery

Funky To smile in an offensive and self-satisfied manner

Opulent to decorate with needlework

to smirk Original and stylish, but unconventional

Motif A repeated design in architecture or decoration

Tuxedo joined with

Intertwined a man’s suit complete with bow-tie, usually only for weddings

To Mould to supply the wants or needs of someone/to provide food

to strut The high-fashion clothing created by designers.

quirky Very unconventional

couture to walk in a self-important manner

Chauffeur harsh, grim, extreme

In Search of a Russian Style

By Marina Kamenev, The Moscow Times

Ten years ago, characterising Russian fashion would have been easy: women tended toward bright lipstick, leopard prints and lots of bling, while the men chose a black leather mafioso look. Today Russia’s streets are filled with everything from goth to glamour, and even Russian designers find it difficult to define a “Russian style.”

From the up-and-coming Nina Donis and Chistova and Endourova to wunderkid Max Chernitsov to Russia’s hottest export Denis Simachev, Russian designers cater to every taste, and while they might not be able to agree on aesthetics, they all say that Russian shoppers are slowly starting to look for homegrown labels.

“Russia is huge. There are designers from Yekaterinburg and Kamchatka. How can you have one style with so much geography?,” asked Marina Endourova, who shares her label with Anna Chistova. Endourova described their designs as “postmodern retro.” Their lines feature updated classics with sexy details like plunging necklines in unexpected fabrics. “We want our women to look like women and our men to look like men,” said Endourova.

Donis Pouppis, of Nina Donis, believes it is too early in the development of Russian fashion to talk about a Russian style. “If Russians do have a style,” said Pouppis by email, “it is a mix of primitive folk and the more recent past. But this is still being formulated. It’s not like the English combination of revolution and tradition or the Italian emotional sexuality or the French defined chic. If anything, Russian design is more about the mood than the clothes,” he added. Pouppis and his partner Nina Neritina have chosen casual stripes in sexy but wearable shapes for their fall line.

Ernest Yakovlev, an editor with L’Officiel Moscow, one of Russia’s leading fashion magazines, said that Russians may not have a specific style, but they do have a specific taste. “Their love for all things shiny and decorative comes from their Eastern neighbours,” he said, “but then they also have a little something from the Europeans.”

While ornate designs and accessories were prevalent among the fashionable classes in Imperial Russia, communism put an end to this trend, rejecting excessive decoration in favour of stark Soviet sensibility.

“There was no fashion in Soviet times. There were designers such as Slava Zaitsev, but for the people, it was like watching a movie. His designs had no relevance for anyone,” said Anzor Kankulov, editor of the Russian edition of Harper’s Bazaar.

“My dad would have been a designer if he could have started his career now,” said Anna Chistova. “In the late 1980s, he would sew jeans to sell in stalls, and I remember him copying the Levi’s embroidered logo of the man on a horse into the leather label of the jeans.”

Both Chistova and her partner Marina Endourova think that the fashion industry in Russia today is like anywhere else. To get ahead in Russian fashion, says Endourova, “you just need to work hard, be a good designer and have great connections.”

VICTIMS OF CHANCE

Chistova and Endourava met in 2004 on their way to a fashion competition in Ukraine. Their first show at Moscow Fashion Week, inspired by their chance encounter, was called “Trans-Europe Express.” Their sexy models sporting the crumpled clothes and bed hair reminiscent of passengers on long-distance trains caught the attention of the media, and their brand developed from there.

The element of chance seems to be a unifyingtrait among Russia’s top fashion designers. Max Chernitsov, 29, studied philosophy rather than design, but says he “just entered the right competitions.”

Chernitsov was the first Russian designer to be stocked at TsUM, Moscow’s high-end department store, and says he owes his success to his theory that intelligent people want to stand out, but “not look like freaks.”

“I design for funky intellectuals, people that like to look a little bit different, to stand out in a crowd,” he said in his noisy studio above a garage in south Moscow.

While studying fashion at the Moscow State Academy of Textiles, Denis Simachev differed from his other students for one reason: “I did nothing,” said the designer, known for his attitude, as he sat at the opulent bar in his new store in central Moscow.

“I was unhappy with the education and with the unprofessional attitude of the teachers. I hated being taught by professors who had never had their own collections and were not successful in this way. They couldn’t share any experience, only the knowledge that they gained from books. I could do that on my own, so I did,” he said.

Simachev was ready to drop out, but his parents insisted that he finish his coursework. “In order to get a degree, you have to enter three competitions as a formality. But I am a maximalist,” he said, “I treated this seriously and won all three competitions.”

In 1999, Simachev won the Russian heat of the Smirnoff International Fashion Awards, the world’s most prestigious competition for fashion design students, and took his designs to represent Russia at the international finals in Hong Kong.

“When I came back to the university, suddenly I was the top student; they were so proud of what they had taught me,” he said, smirking.

Simachev’s designs incorporate more Russian motifs than the country’s other fashion names. He has used the flowery patterns of lacquered boxes on his t-shirts, embroidered his tuxedos with traditional Russia motifs, intertwined gold thread into his fur coats and put the image of President Vladimir Putin on a pink shirt surrounded by the decorative frame usually reserved for Orthodox Christian icons.

Simachev says that there can be no set Russian look because the fashion industry does not exist in Russia. “Russian fashion will always borrow from France and Italy,” he said, “but that’s got nothing to do with Russian style. I am trying to mould a new Russian fashion, but no one bothered with this before me.”

Kankulov agrees: “I don’t think that Russian style lies in traditional patterns, like those on lacquered boxes, but rather it lies in designers trying to explore Russia’s society and history, past and present, and Simachev is definitely leading the way.”

CHANGING PERCEPTIONS

Kankulov says that another problem for Russian designers is that Russian consumers still want Western brands. “They want Gucci because their friends automatically assume it’s cool,” he said. “But this is changing. There are lots of people who are trying to be patriotic and wear Russian fashion.”

Max Chernitsov, for example, has promoted his designs among his countrymen by having the Russian football team Lokomotiv strut the catwalk in his quirky t-shirts.

But Kankulov indicated there may be other motives for Russians to purchase local couture. “When they go to dinner parties, they are no longer going to surprise anyone by wearing Dolce & Gabbana. They get to stand out from their friends by wearing Russian brands,” he said.

Chistova and Endourova say that Russians love their clothes, but so far they are not designing for the masses. “Actors, models and art people like our things, but it has not filtered down to the general public,” said Chistova. I mean the people that wear our label are not the ones on the metro, but the ones with chauffeurs. ”

And certainly the kiosks that line the passageways near metro stations feature fake D&G belt buckles, “Versace” Denim Hats and skintight jeans with exaggerated Calvin Klein logos rather than any mass-produced version of Russian luxury brands.

Donis Pouppis thinks this is partly because of the government’s attitude. “It’s hard to talk Russian fashion when we just don’t have the resources. Russia does not seem to invest in much without the words ‘oil’ or ‘gas’ in it,” he said.

And so the ready-to-wear lines for the middle class do not exist. “We don’t have the good sewing factories, textile manufacturers or people with enough skills, and making something of good quality is expensive. It will all come, but at the moment we just cannot compete with China,” said Pouppis.

Will the future lead to a more defined Russian style? Chernitsov said that Russian fashion needs at least another decade to develop. “The Russian people are passionate and poetic,” he said. “They need a concept to form a style. Russia needs to unite behind an idea, and then it will appear in the clothes.”

“It could be something like world peace,” he laughed.

Please consider the following questions:

What do you think is ‘Russia’s style’? Does Russia have a unique fashion?

Do Russian men and women dress well, in general?

Are designer brands and labels popular in Russia? Why do people wear them?

Are clothes shops and boutiques good in Samara?

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29