On 20 February – four days before Russia invaded Ukraine – Natalya Ishchenko, the co-founder of Ukrainian bedding label Sea Me, travelled to Kiev from her home in the seaside city of Odessa, to celebrate her birthday with friends. She was surprised by the carefree mood of people in the country’s capital, which would in the weeks following the invasion become a focal point of fighting. “It felt like there was no threat and we could breathe,” Ishchenko says. “It smelt like spring”.
Returning home feeling energetic and inspired, one day before the invasion, Ishchenko threw herself into work, devising new colours for her brand’s soft, organically dyed duvet covers and pillows, and new shapes for her pyjamas, which span lightweight summer styles and kimono-inspired sets. Marketing campaigns and photoshoots were top of Ishchenko’s mind. Three days later, she’d fled the city and country she was raised in – after a stint spent paralysed in her apartment, transfixed by the news of the first wave of Russian bombings – and was travelling west to Moldova on a minibus. “My friends started calling me saying they were heading to the border, and I needed to leave right away.”
Ishchenko’s journey had just begun. After arriving in Kishinev, Moldova’s capital, and finding its airport closed, she embarked on a gruelling 50-hour bus journey to Paris, where a friend had offered her accommodation in her apartment for a month. Waiting in freezing temperatures at various borders for 10 hours, she was too exhausted to panic. “I didn’t have any energy to worry,” Ishchenko says. “I just knew I needed to get to Paris.”
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A week after her arrival, Ishchenko’s mother embarked on the multi-day journey, arriving safely in a city which, for Ishchenko, felt remarkably unchanged. “It was shocking to see normal life – people sitting in the cafes, going to offices, on dates – and the news from Ukraine was: bombings, bombings, bombings.” Her father remains in Odessa, the southwestern city which until recently had remained unscathed by Russian troops, but last week witnessed cruise missile bombings outside the city. Ishchenko’s mother talks constantly about returning home.
The topography of Odessa – once a popular resort town on the coast of the Black Sea – is what inspired Ishchenko and Eteri Saneblidze to launch Sea Me in 2015. “We wanted to give our customers the feeling of living by the sea, having a slow life with no rush, spending time with family, friends, kids and enjoying being in bed,” Ishchenko says. The names of her brand’s linen bedding have escapist, oceanic overtones: Pacific, Caribbean, Foam, Breeze, and Teal Waves. Sea Me’s manufacturing is also based in Odessa, and remarkably, after a pause, production has been continued by the seamstresses who have chosen to remain in the city. “I know that we need to keep working to be able to pay the team, to support their families, to support the Ukrainian army, and to support the Ukrainian economy by paying taxes,” Ishchenko says.
Having left Paris, Ishchenko and her mother are now in Lisbon, helped by friends and volunteers, but she is fraught with worry regarding their next step. She is also concerned about the possibility of future manufacturing in Odessa, should their fabric stock run out. “When I left the country and could finally focus and think, I texted the people I knew back in Ukraine asking if they needed money. Words are powerful, but I also know that lots of people have lost their means of income and they are too proud to ask for help,” Ishchenko says. “In the first days of the war, international people I knew were texting me asking how I was. But very few of them were actually offering help. When I was trying to think how I would act [in their shoes] if some of them were in the country where the war began, I think I would immediately open my door to them for an indefinite time. But they did not. Most of them did not.”
That customers continue to purchase Sea Me pieces brings some comfort. “Some of them sent words of support as soon as the war began, and when we started production again, immediately placed orders, even though the shipping now takes longer,” Ishchenko says. Poignantly, Ukrainians continue to order, too. “They say it reminds them of home,” she adds. “It gives them a glimpse into the life they used to have, and [that they] dream of returning to.”