On Tuesday, to mark the final day of London Fashion Week, the cavernous show space of the Old Selfridges Hotel—tucked just around the back of the former department store—was transformed for the last time this season. As part of an ongoing partnership between the British Fashion Council and Ukraine Fashion Week that kicked off last season with a multi-designer show, a trio of Ukrainian talents unable to stage shows in their home cities stepped into the spotlight: Kseniaschnaider, who showed last season, alongside Elenareva, and Nadya Dzyak, neither of whom had shown in the British capital before.
For Ksenia Schnaider, who designs her collections alongside her partner in life and work, Anton, returning to London to show again was “an honor.” And while she described the collection as “about the feeling of complete transformation in times of destruction,” it had lost none of the pair’s signature playful touch.
The highlights were a series of inventive riffs on denim, including skirts with strips of frayed fabric swishing from the hems, and jeans that appeared to have been turned inside out, sprouting layers of blue-and-white fabric strands—some of which had been inspired by an AI generator that regurgitated ideas based on their 13 years of design. “I had to travel to Ukraine as that’s where all our production is,” Schnaider said, highlighting the subtle nods to traditional cossack “sharovary” pants. “We also took some of our traditional knits and recreated them in denim,” said the designer. The collection also featured the latest chapter in the brand’s collaboration with Adidas Originals, here in the form of charming bags tied around the waist and a purse in the shape of a shoebox.
Next up was Elena Reva, who brought an impressively refined note to the proceedings, with a collection of masculine-feminine eveningwear and tailoring that was inspired by the figure of the Mother Goddess from ancient Trypillian culture—in Reva’s words, an “unwavering and fearless protector.” Here, that was translated most elegantly into a series of gorgeous bias-cut silk dresses, prints developed with the artist Lina Nechipolina that were based on the patterns of Trypillian clay jugs, as well as intricate black and white crochet details that swung from the handles of bags or were formulated into slinky full-length gowns.
Still, despite the breezy, sophisticated trappings of her designs, backstage after the show, Reva was vocal about the importance of continuing to support Ukrainian creatives on the world stage. “It was not so easy making this collection,” Reva said. “Sometimes we have no lights, and there are rockets going off, but I’m so happy and so grateful to my team that they worked every day to bring this to life—and that they still go to work every day, because they love it. This is our life, and we have to continue.”
The final collection came from Nadya Dyzak, who opted to lean into her more exuberant side—a pivot, she explained, that was unexpected even by her. “My previous collection was all black,” said Dyzak. “I don’t know what happened with me, in my soul, but I really wanted to make something optimistic, and about the fact we still believe in a kind of lightness.” On the runway, this came in the form of a kaleidoscopic collection partly inspired by the work of the Ukrainian naive artist Polina Raiko, whose house museum in Oleshky has been tragically destroyed due to floods caused by the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam.
Through Dyzak’s collection, with its pastel-hued butterflies, spiraling curves of pleated tulle, acid-wash denim flowers, and multicolored ginghams, the subversive, boldly-colored world of Raiko’s work lived on. “This collection for me is about hope,” Dyzak said after the show. It’s a sentiment that could hold true for every one of the three designers, who walked the runway together wrapped in Ukrainian flags—and whose collections all transcended the challenging circumstances in which they were made.
