Three weeks into war, Ukraine’s fashion creatives reflect

Pelipas is developing a website to connect European companies with Ukrainian creatives who need support, ranging from donations to job opportunities. She has secured three months of accommodation in an Austrian hotel for 10 to 15 Ukrainian artists and their families, and plans to help those artists sell their work to sustain them longer term. She emphasises the need for sustained support. “War is not a couple of days, it’s a long-term catastrophe,” she says. “It’s important to be empathetic and not judge Ukrainians as victims forever — we are a strong and positive nation with an established creative community.”

Vogue Ukraine’s current fashion director, Venya Brykalin, was fortunate to fly to Milan for fashion week the night before the Russian invasion. He has not returned to Ukraine since. “The stories from our team and across the country are terrible,” he says. Back in Ukraine, the magazine’s beauty editor, who usually covers cosmetics and wellness, has been volunteering in community kitchens and cleaning floors. The culture editor’s husband has enrolled as a medic and the couple have seen the horrors of wars in the streets around their Kyiv apartment.

Those members of Vogue Ukraine who are able to continue working remotely — some from bomb shelters — are producing content on how to survive chemical attacks and where to access resources after explosions. “We’re not trained for war, nobody knows how to navigate this,” says Brykalin, who is rallying European contacts to provide donations and support to Ukrainian creatives. “People send thoughts and prayers, but let’s think of how to be proactive and help, how to provide systematic support long-term and shift the narrative to positive change.”

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