Timur: Denim, velvet, leather and silk are all prominent elements that I carry throughout the chapters. They not only reflect social classes, but are memories from the past. Denim I can relate to my childhood in Russia, where we had mounds of second hand jeans as they were the only things we could actually afford to wear. I grew up hating them but somehow, when designing, I was drawn once again to this fabric that I later found out I really enjoyed working with. The velvet, on the other hand, is inspired by the upholstery materials used in museums in Saint Petersburg, like within the Hermitage.
Tigran: One of our main influences is brutalism, a form of architecture that both myself and Timur were heavily exposed to during our youth. We saw the brutalist architecture inspired by the constructivists at the time, which is absolutely simplistic, some quite ugly, some of it quite amazing, and in these collections you can clearly see how we reference it quite a lot in terms of the chevron, and how we place and use patchwork. It’s more structural, more mathematical I would say than the beautiful decorative Saint Petersburg European architecture style.
Timur: Patchwork, as previously mentioned is the most prominent element, which is repeatedly used and seen throughout the collections. In the next collection we will see the repetition of a new element, characters. Characters from the past such as from the first collection (professors, doctors, and students), the second collection (aristocrats, peasants and priests), and the last collection (father, sons and cowboys) will all come together and interact with one another in one collection, giving birth to new characters and narratives.