In N. V. Gogol's 200-year anniversary leading Russian and Ukrainian designers presented a fashion show «Cossacks in the City» on April 3 during Russian Fashion Week devoted to the launch of the Russian movie «Taras Bulba».
Designers were offered to remake the costumes created for the film in contemporary manner - Cossack trousers, shirts, “svytky” (peasant's overcoat).
«...Lilia Poustovit explores traditional Ukrainian clothes long and deeply, designer seeks to understand and modernize key elements of ethnic clothes, claiming that they, among other things, provide a powerful ancient power ...»
The Cossacks movement, an important part of Ukrainian history, and their clothes are a bright reflection of historical, cultural and energy processes – is the history of peoples who lived on the land where we live now. The Cossacks theme is a theme of freedom, almost absolute.
Lilia Poustovit, designer: «I know Gogol's works from the childhood, like all of us of course, but in the adulthood I am very interested to plunge back into his world and to perceive and comprehend him afresh - with all Gogol’s love to mystification, deep knowledge of human nature and apparent esoteric subtext in his work.
I understand that many designers would express themselves in these costumes, making them more personal and contemporary, not keeping the main, depth in them.
Therefore, we tried to take on the contrary with the greatest esteem and respect for the ancient Cossack dress, the sources of origin of which seem to me common with clothes of Indian Brahmins and Old Chinese soldiers - flat cutting, volume collected in silhouette through the hard belts, leather cuffs, and of course very bright colors - combination of white and red is a very powerful energy field.
We only used “svytky” and trousers, we were lucky with the colors, they were brick-red, dense cherry and very thick bright red. We have made very contemporary dresses from trousers - voluminous, with complex sleeves as well as from one of the “svytky” we made a fashionable thing - a coat-scarf, leaving only a collar and a decorated front with a buckle in front and from another one “svytka” we made a next season hit - a dress without sleeves.
I am very happy with the effect. Costumes resulted bright, impressive, and they retained a powerful energy of free and brave people».
For Lilia Poustovit this project is extremely interesting, it marks the beginning of large-scale project Poustovit Ethno, to make more accessible a deep esoteric meaning of ancient signs and symbols of ethnic dress, but its production will be realized in combination with modern technologies and multimedia. This project is with using a large amount of handmade, which in fact gives the true value and the positive energy of all these things.
