It all starts in Paris.
Well, in fact, it all started much earlier, in Moscow.
I’ve always designed and created my own clothing. As the art director for a luxury lifestyle magazine in Moscow, I especially liked preparing the fashion pages. Being the first to get sneak peeks of new collections, showing off on the parties in the elegant, but slightly unbelievable outfits, creating my own style, and never worrying about being dressed like nobody else. A luxury that only ‘made-by-me’ clothes can offer.
Then I found myself wanting to leave, to abandon everything and start a new life. In France, first in Aix-en-Provence and then in Paris, the city of my dreams.
In Paris, I pursue my own path. I start out as a freelance art director, doing calligraphy for Sofitel and creating beautiful magazines for French regions. But something is missing. So I sign up in a Textile Design class, simply for the pleasure of drawing. A logical step: since I already made my own clothes, why not also make my own fabrics?
Moscow winters fade out of my memories, I only retain a slight nostalgia for the magic of glittering morning snowfall illuminating each branch of every tree. I start to find Parisian winters just as cold.
Being sensitive to cold by nature, I’ve always bundled up in big scarves and shawls, ignoring all those who, looking amazed, keep asking me, ‘But how can you be cold here, when you’re from Moscow?’
The only problem is that even though I made my own clothes, I didn’t have much influence on my scarves and shawls. Which choose, warm OR beautiful? The eternal question!
Then one day, the answer became obvious: I will draw a collection of scarves. They will be big, so you can wrap yourself up in them. They will be in pure wool, so they will be warm. And I’ll line them up to be even warmer, while leaving the choice of lining to the person wearing it.
Then one day, the answer became obvious: I will draw a collection of scarves
The designs will be beautiful from any angle, whether the scarf is bunched up or carefully folded, it will always be nice to look at. Not just ‘picture’ scarves that are made to be admired while lying flat, but real clothes that tell the story of the design, even when worn.
That is how, two years later, after thousands of designs that were thrown out and hundreds of print trials – finding THE right fabric, THE right printer, getting all the colors to be exactly right, and so on – in autumn 2016, the first scarves come out in Paris.