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MOSCOW: In her workshop in a Moscow attic, Maria Andrianova uses a sewing technique she learned from elderly women in Karelia, a forested region of northwestern Russia.
“For me, sewing is a way to find out who I am,” said the 31-year-old designer.
She describes her “Masha Andrianova” fashion line as “for the modern world” but uses some sewing techniques from the Tsarist era.
Her flowing dresses, high neck blouses and pleated skirts are made from natural materials in light or autumn colors.
“In Karelia, the locals showed me a sewing method I didn’t know about. They learned it from their mothers, it was like a family secret,” she said, lightly tying two threads together. He said.
More and more young Russian fashion designers like Andrianova are taking inspiration from traditional sewing methods that have fallen into disuse, seeing them as a way to break away from the Western brands that have dominated the country since the fall of the USSR. I came
“We no longer want to see what others in the West are doing,” he said.
“We want to find our own ways, because we have many traditions and also a very rich culture.”
Learning about such traditions can be a way for young Russians to explore their country’s past more than the relatively familiar Bolshevik Revolution, he said.
Andrianova is inspired by the sketches of an ancestor who owned a knitting factory, as well as the life story of her great-grandmother, who ran a clothing business. He also learned the technique from his grandmother, who was born during the Soviet era.
“But I’m not restoring period clothing,” she said. “I’m creating modern clothes that have Russian history in them.”
At the age of 35, Yukhann Nikadimus decided to devote himself entirely to making kokoshniki — traditional women’s high headdresses that were particularly popular in the 19th century.
Working in a factory that dates back to the 16th century but was renamed after Soviet-era Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, the long-bearded man meticulously embroiders beaded patterns on canvas stretched over a wooden frame. does
While he gets his ideas from period images, he insists his cocoons can work in any contemporary wardrobe.
For example, you can wear a kokoshnik with a modern wedding dress, he said.
“National dress should not be something that is fixed,” he insists. “It changes all the time — new techniques appear, you have to incorporate them, it’s a natural process.”
For cultural observer Ilya Oskolkov-Sensiper, founder of Moscow’s Strelka Design Institute, such a revival of interest in pre-revolutionary clothing among young designers was “almost inevitable.”
“During perestroika (in the 1980s) and the decades that followed, Russians were attracted to the West and everything that came from there,” he said.
“At that time we (in Russia) underestimated the value of what we had and exaggerated the beauty of everything outside.”
“Now though we are living in an age of self-discovery, we are trying to figure out who we are, what constitutes our identity and what makes us unique.
“It’s not just about fashion — it goes much deeper. It’s connected to design, music and film. It’s beyond politics.”
In Russia’s textile-producing city of Ivanovo, 28-year-old Maxim Krylov wants to help young designers learn about their heritage.
He has founded an annual festival called Textile Capital in the town, 300 kilometers (186 miles) northeast of Moscow, which aims to encourage designers to use traditional fabrics.
He said that this is our duty.
“We want to preserve this heritage to be an inspiration for Russian design, to show the globalized industry that we have our own world, a world that is Russian and local.”
Krylov said that in July, some designers worked with clothes printed with Soviet propaganda designs found in the archives of the Ivanovo factories.
Wearing such clothes does not mean looking old fashioned.
Vasilena Kharlamova, 29, from Moscow, says she likes clothes that are “connected to (Russian) culture” and has just ordered a dress from Maria Andrianova that she can “wear with shoes in everyday life.” intend to.”
However, she admits that such clothes are not to everyone’s taste.
“You have to learn to love these clothes and understand the past.”
