Sasha Gapanovich proudly represents Russia at the WFE.
In her eponymous emerging brand, Sasha is blurring the borders between art-objects of high fashion and street wear, day-to-day garments
She is native from the Russian Far North city of Murmansk. This place is harsh to live as winter can last over half a year, but landscapes and aurora borealis are mesmerizing.
All this northern magic we can Dnd in the collections of the young designer. They perfectly reUect her personality: eclectic, combination of colors and volumes, prints, multi-layered, second hand and handwork, a slight touch of nostalgia which serves “as a bridge between the generations”.
Authenticity and couture quality pay off as Gapanovich was invited to present her last two collections within Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia. And now Paris is calling!
Exclusively for FOXYLAB NY we talked to Sasha and are happy to share her vision here with you:
For me, this comparison is 0attering! It seems to me that such similarity lays in the concept of deconstruction. In my design I use the same “rules” as the famous Antwerp Six, where the basics of cutting and sewing do not argue, but erase the line between the stable concepts of masculine, feminine, everyday, elegant, new, old and cancel the perception of “beautiful” as inevitably elegant.
For me, these things are inseparable from one another. Fabric can reinforce the idea and convey the meaning of the collection more clearly, but a beautiful fabric cannot save a bad design. I use natural fabrics, Italian and French stock. I also work with second hand materials and I do recycle.
So many things can inspire me: travel, cultural differences, architecture, art, communication, people, events, famous personalities, nature and much more. One of my favorite artists is Henri Rousseau and his bright fairy-tale worlds. I can’t single out just one movie. Periods of life do not repeat, and emotional states also require different Llms and books. I can deLnitely say that I love documentary criminal investigations and thrillers.
As for me, my lifestyle has not changed much during the pandemic – I am a stay-at-home person and spend a lot of time within the walls of my house, working at home. I have a large family – 4 daughters, younger twins, and before the pandemic, I took care of them. As for work, this period allowed me to make a strong collection and get a grant to participate in fashion week and quickly gain momentum in the development of the brand.
My family helps me a lot if I need to go to a show or take part in a project. My kids know how important my brand is for me, it’s my lifetime job, so they are very supportive.
Sustainable fashion is our future. My brand is very small, at this stage of development, all collections are produced only in a single copy, and often they cannot be reproduced in the same fabrics. I use natural fabrics but also the leftovers for applications and accessories, packaging collections. I will dive deeper into the topic of sustainable development and, for my part, competently build work in this direction.
It’s definitely becoming part of our everyday future. There will always be a group of people who need this form of self-expression, and perhaps it can become part of a sustainable fashion.
My Russian muses are Renata Litvinova (@renatalitvinovaoTciall), Ksenia Sobchak (@xenia_sobchak), Irina Gobacheva (@irina_gorbacheva), Chulpan Khamatova (@chuplanoTcial), Irina Khakamada (@irina_hakamada). These women are unique, intelligent, beautiful, with a creative nature, inner strength and vividly manifest themselves and can inspire.
I plan to further develop my conceptual brand and produce collections with meaning and love for my homeland, but to go beyond the Russian market. I see that people from different countries like my cloths. I also want to make my collections more accessible to the Russian market without losing the quality and my DNA. I am just at the beginning of my journey, and there are many technical moments that require development and growth.
