Ukrainian womenswear brand LITKOVSKA presented its first official mono-brand catwalk show since Russia started full-scale war*, during this Paris Fashion Week: on the traditional roundabout – the “Carrousel” – at All. de Castiglione, Jardin des Tuileries, by the Louvre, Paris (*Russia’s invasion began in 2014 with the Eastern territories and Crimea).

LITKOVSKA, founded by designer Lilia Litkovska (who had to flee her native Kyiv last Paris Fashion Week at the onset of the invasion, without her collection and only her two year old toddler in tow) staged a stunningly moving catwalk show and performance, with Ukrainian women in national dress singing their traditional rites of Spring hymns within the gardens – dedicated to the brand’s SS’23 collection – a poetic and sincere study of rebirth and life cycles. The new collection is called «Vesnianka» and pays tribute to these Ukrainian spring greeting songs – a traditional way to welcome a new beginning and express hopes for a better future.

Lilia Litkovska sees Ukraine as an unquenchable source of inspiration: a young nation going through adolescence and fighting for its freedom, the designer’s homeland is still in its «Spring» years, which became a core of the collection’s concept.