Who? LITKOVSKAYA
What? BE SUSTAINABLE! Fashion Summit – a circular fashion focus
Where? Ukrainian Fashion Week No Season 2021
Why designs by LITKOVSKAYA matter?
For a product to have an eternal life, it takes a development process that puts that in motion. At the end of its life, it gets a new life. Designer Lilia Litkovskaya transforms no longer needed garments into a new iteration, emphasizing a perpetual and seasonless design practice.
The ARTISANAL collection was created in a traditional Ukrainian hand-crafted weaving process, that has been passed down from generation to generation. Garments and fabrics are dissolved into threads which are then rolled into yarn balls and weaved into a new fabric – “dorizhka” – on 80-year-old wooden looms. The result is a canvas of unpredictable color and texture. Lilia, who is the fourth generation to create clothes, refers to it as “the national Ukrainian bouclé, dorizhka carpets”.
All items from the collection are handcrafted and produced by local Ukrainian female artisans: the brand found skilled craftswomen from rural areas who were eager to share traditional techniques and give them a modern take. For instance, creating “The Shirts” jacket takes around 37 hours of handiwork and requires 50 shirts. Old shirts are torn into pieces and put back together by a craftswoman from the village Chernaya, situated in the Ukrainian region of Podíllja.
For LITKOVSKAYA, nothing is new or old – “all we have around us is an endless circle of life, the wheel of Samsara, which constantly, eternally, shuffles energies and ideas”. This philosophy is manifested in the ARTISANAL line: after a garment is no longer needed in its current form, there is no need to throw it away. By deconstructing it into threads and scraps and then putting it back together again in a new form, Lilia gives it the chance to have a new life.
Ukrainian Fashion Week No Season 2021 and BE SUSTAINABLE! Fashion Summit platforms are on point and inspiring for the necessity of conservation.
The national self-identification process is taking place in Ukraine at this stage. We begin to believe in ourselves. Here is the secret: when you believe in yourself, the world also starts to pay attention to you.
– Lilia Litkovskaya
Images: courtesy of Ukrainian Fashion Week
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