December 13, 2022 |
On 16 March 2022, Jean Gritsfeldt closed Berlin Fashion Week with a collection made by a group of volunteers in Berlin, as directed by the designer from his mother’s flat in Kyiv. This was like no other show I have been to before (in more than 30 years of show-going) and one that is now seared in my memory as one of the most devastating but hopeful of events. Very occasionally, fashion does actually reflect the times in which we live in a way that is meaningful and real, and for half an hour, the reality of war and the often-dislocated world of fashion collided.
The show opened with the sound of air-raid sirens, followed by explosions of light, then, out of the darkness, we saw a model splattered with blood-red paint move jerkily down the runway into the empty expanse of Kraftwerk Berlin, the former power station that hosts Berlin Fashion Week. What we were about to see was a mirror of the lived experience of Jean Gritsfeldt, a 33-year-old Ukrainian designer who was unable to travel to Germany for his show. What we saw was a stark reality check on an unfathomable war that was less than a month old, raging just 800 miles away from Berlin – whose railway stations were offloading trains filled with refugees, women and children torn from their everyday lives, the men forced to stay behind and serve in the army.It was a moment of hope, solidarity and pride.
“Today is not the time to talk about fashion but through fashion. Today we will not show the new season. Today we will not show new looks,” said Gritsfeldt in a pre-recorded video at the beginning of the show. His long hair was combed straight and he was wearing a khaki shirt embroidered with a heart and a dove.
“When you sit in a bomb shelter or dugout or basement, nobody cares about what you wear,” he said. “The main thing is to feel warm, comfortable and protected. Fashion is not a reflection of today; it always looks to the future for the years ahead. Today I use the tools and weapons of fashion and I struggle for the fact that tomorrow we will be free. For the new season we are suggesting that people wear their feelings and sensations as a defence.” This, he said, was “a collection of emotions and feelings starting with love and kindness”. Then an air-raid siren sounded and the show began.
The clothes were simple but their messages were powerful. Basic shapes on cotton shirts and trousers were printed with Cyrillic script, in English and Ukrainian, with words like “respect”, “hope”, “poetry”, “song”, “peace”, “liberty”, “light” and “Ukraine”. The show ended with footage showing solidarity for the people of Ukraine, from the standing ovation the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, received when he addressed the House of Commons and various Stop the War demonstrations around the world to images celebrating Ukrainian history, heritage and culture. Fashion Revolution’s co-founder Orsola de Castro was in the audience that night. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment of togetherness against the odds, of presenting a united front and working together to achieve something bigger. Of abandoning the me me me, which is so often the human default, to embrace the you you you instead,” she said. “It left me breathless, it was so refreshing, so raw and so rare.”
Carina Bischof introduced the show, a tiny figure in the huge space, dressed in a blue top and yellow skirt. “Fashion has the power to communicate on another level,” she said. Bischof, whois the country lead for Fashion Revolution Germany and part of Studio MM04, a Berlin-based creative strategy consultancy, worked with the group of designers and activists who volunteered to make the collection for Gritsfeldt so that his show would go on. After hearing about the situation just a week before his scheduled show, the photographer and sustainability campaigner Cherie Birkner galvanised a team of more than 30 volunteers who set to work donating fabric, time and expertise to bring his vision to life. Gritsfeldt directed the proceedings over Zoom and Facetime. Pattern cutters, designers, machinists, screen printers, stylists, production teams and models worked together to create not so much a collection as a manifesto. “We are demonstrating that we are there to make it through hard times together,” wrote Birkner on herInstagram. “We will make it through this together. We are for a world filled with love. For a world without war.”
Over the period of a week, Gritsfeldt’s vision came together with a series of statements of solidarity and messages of hope. “Special times need special actions,” said Bischof in her emotional introduction. “Dear Jean, we made this collection for you and your country, we are in this together and we send you all of our love and hope.”
That night, Gritsfeldt was at his mother’s flat near Zhuliany Airport in Kyiv, where he had moved when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, watching the livestream as the sounds of bombs reverberated around him. “It was not about the brand. It was just something I decided to make for the whole community,” he told me two days later when we met over Zoom. “We were watching it and I was completely there with all of the people, you know, mentally.” It must have been such a mix of emotions to witness the most pivotal moment of your career and to be unable to be present to experience it in the flesh, to be facing such an existential crisis that the Russian invasion had created. “I don’t have enough words of gratitude to express to everybody who was working as an act of solidarity,” said Gritsfeldt, not just of the volunteers but also the models who gave their time. “One of the girls was from Belarus, and she’s also suffering. I’m not going to be racist and to say that, you know, all the Russian people, they’re like, fools. They were just brainwashed during all these years.
The mood in Berlin was one of numbness, a sense of unease and uncertainty about being part of a week dedicated to fashion. How could it be possible that while families were being torn apart, men, women and children being shot down, bombed indiscriminately, here we were in Berlin looking at clothes? At that point, around 15,000 refugees were pouring into the city daily. The front page of Die Zeiton March 17 showed a young woman carrying a small chubby-cheeked child dressed in a snowsuit printed with roses, arriving off one of the trains crowded with Ukrainians, ordinary people who are victims of extraordinary times, fleeing the comfort of their homes for safety in Berlin and elsewhere in Europe. And while fashion seemed like the least significant thing to be thinking about, for Jean Gritsfeldt being able to show a collection on the runway in Berlin was about hope, about defiance, about a fundamental right not just asa Ukrainian designer but as a creative individual to have the freedom to express his country’s culture on a platform for all the world to see.
As a young man, Gritsfeldt was unable to leave his country, as only women and children were allowed to leave – though even if he’d had the choice, he would have stayed. He could have seen his brother, a graphic designer who had moved to relative safety in the countryside with his wife, a journalist, but chose to stay in Kyiv. His mother is a doctor working at a local hospital. “Lots of friends moved to the western part of Ukraine when the war started because it’s much safer to be there.” But he was staying with his mother. He told me about going for a walk a few days earlier. “This city is completely empty. It was so weird. I never felt something like this.” He walked back to their flat in the centre of the city “to get this experience… because soldiers, [there are] lots of them posted around the city and it’s so strange, it’s like a parallel reality. It’s just extraordinary to think that this can happen to your city, to the place you live and work…”
This is his tenth year as the head of his fashion brand, having built a name for himself as a designer with a strong vision and as something of a showman. He has previously shown his collections at surprising venues, including a supermarket, an airport, a train station, a boxing club and an ice hockey rink. In February 2017, he made his debut in London as part of the British Council’s International Fashion Showcase alongside five others selected from Ukrainian Fashion Week – Flow the Label; Alina Zamanova; Frolov; Yana Chervinska; Dzhus; and The Coat by Katya Silchenko. “London is so my city, I love this vibe so much,” he said. In 2013, he won the Harper’s Bazaar Ukraine Fashion Forward Prize, which included a short course at Central Saint Martin’s as part of the prize. “I have the best memories from that period of my life,” he said. Despite his success, and showing his collection as part of London Fashion Week in September 2019, he dreams of returning and possibly doing an MA somewhere in Europe, “You know, just maybe for one year, to refresh.”
Right now, however, Gritsfeldt is not so much thinking of the future but doing his best to stay positive. He meditates, and was remarkably calm and focused when we spoke. We talked about how it feels to live in a city under siege. At the time, a Russian tank convoy, 40 miles long, was heading for Kyiv. “There is a supermarket nearby but there is not so much food. I like to eat simple food so, for me, it’s okay. At least like we have bread, fresh bread and water, near here. We’re eating very simple food, but I’m thankful for it.” I asked if he has a basement to shelter from the air raids. “All these basements were built in the Soviet years,” he said. “[They are] not very comfortable for people who are there. It’s much harder to be there than in a flat [psychologically]… especially after the sirens. The fashion show started with sirens. We are hearing it during the day and you’re shaking every time you hear it, so meditation, it’s my saving [grace].”
When we spoke, he was working out how to produce the pieces he had shown in Berlin. In May, the collection went on sale on his website, including the khaki shirt he wore in the video, with proceeds going towards supporting Ukraine in its fight against the invasion. “By wearing this, we are telling the world we will fight for our independence and freedom,” he posted on Instagram.He was also working on some NFTs and continuing to put together a book to celebrate ten years in business. Gritsfeldt told me that he had been selected as Designer of the Year 2022 for Helsinki Fashion Week in August, where his collection will be shown. And a book celebrating 10 years of his brand, Jean I Live In, will also be published around then.
But alongside these practical ways to stay busy, there’s the relentlessness of the war and the anxiety that it will be forgotten by the rest of the world. “The most important thing is to stay alive and to keep our lives and celebrate life every day,” he said. “Every morning I wake up, and today’s the official spring day, when the day becomes longer than the night. The weather is so amazing. It’s still like zero degrees here but I just feel this spring in the air. And I feel like I heard birds singing. I wake up around five o’clock in the morning to greet the sunrise. And I’m just saying, ‘Thank you so much that I’m waking up alive and I have this precious thing…’
Photography courtesy of Jean Gritsfeldt. Taken from Issue 69 of 10 Magazine – PEACE, COURAGE, FREEDOM – out now. Purchase here.
