Russian street style is by no means new. In 2012, The New York Times dubbed a new wave of street style stars the ‘Russian Fashion Pack’ and ever since then, the Soviet Union has produced countless fashion icons, designers and street style stars to provide us with endless inspiration. So forget Paris, Milan and Copenhagen as the European fashion capitals of the world.
Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia, founded in 2000 by Alexander Shumsky, has grown significantly in recent years moving from 18 designers in its inception year to over 170 in 2018. Moscow Fashion Week boasts the likes of Ulyana Sergeenko, Vika Gazinskaya and Gosha Rubchinskiy, and has also given way to up-and-comers like Olga Karput, founder of Moscow concept shop KM20, and Lotta Volkova, right-hand woman to Demna Gvasalia at Vetements and Balenciaga. Although the Soviet fashion scene is relatively young, born when the USSR collapsed in December 1991 and developed a decade later, it is now gaining international attention.
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The Russian fashion industry and Russian designers are now at the forefront of global fashion trends.
Almost thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of ‘post-Soviet style’ emerged. Dictating the new scene was Gosha Rubchinskiy and Demna Gvasalia, whose fashion philosophy feeds on the meshings between digital culture, vintage, ’90s streetwear, youth subculture and Soviet history, giving life to an aesthetic often at the limit of the ‘ugly, underground, hyper-realistic and raw’.
Below, killer outfits from the Russian style set:
