Introducing: Vika Gazinskaya
It’s about time that Moscow transmute its hunger for fashion into a local–and perhaps Russian-born–designer, and Vika Gazinskaya might just be the one to do it. During Paris Couture Week, Gazinskaya’s Spring collection featured in the window space of Colette.
Exaggerating the proportions of eveningwear, Gazinskaya says she designs for “a self-sufficient perfectionist who knows exactly what she wants.” Slightly futuristic yet distinctly feminine, her latest and seventh collection, shown during Moscow Fashion Week, takes root on the page and quite literally jumps off from there. “The idea behind it was sketches coming alive,” she says. “During a 10-minute performance, I tried to show the creative process from the initial sketch to the stylized garment on a person.” Jagged, wing-like structuring recalls Viktor & Rolf, though she says those similarities are a happy coincidence. “After all, isn’t that how the trends are born?”
“Dolls produced in the USSR were often ugly and scary, they didn’t really provoke a desire to play,” she says. “When I got my first Barbie and Ken I started to make their clothing, and even the bed sheets. I was even making furniture for them— fireplace, sofas, beds, painting for the walls!” Gazinskaya’s moves in Paris are a necessary next step. “There’s no real industry [in Russia], so it is difficult to say what Russian aesthetic is fashion wise because there’s no context,” she says. “The opulence of the past is a stereotype and it is not what young women here are obsessed with… As for me, I want to know your opinion!”
VIKA GAZINSKAYA IS AVAILABLE AT COLETTE IN PARIS.