Modedesigner Slava Zaitsev bei Fashion Week in Moskau (2013). Foto: Alexander Nemenov / AFP
Russian fashion designer Viacheslav "Slava"
Zaitsev, dubbed the "Soviet Christian Dior", has died at the age of 85, his
fashion house told AFP Sunday.
Confirming Russian media reports, a spokeswoman added that when Zaitsev had
celebrated his birthday in March with friends, "we could already see he was
very, very, weak".
"The couturier Viacheslav Zaitsev has died," Russian state channel Perviy
Kanal reported, paying tribute to a man who "dictated Soviet and Russian
fashion for decades, an innovator who wasn't afraid of bold experiments".
"It's a great loss for the world of international fashion," Ria Novosti
news agency quoted Russian stylist Sergei Zverev as saying.
Russia's most famous fashion designer, Zaitsev achieved global success with
bright dresses adorned with the flower patterns found on traditional Russian
shawls.
From a modest childhood in Ivanovo, a town of 400,000 people to the
northeast of the capital, his career took him to the catwalks of Paris, New
York and Tokyo.
The French press in the 1960s dubbed him the "Soviet Christian Dior".
Watched closely by the KGB because of his contacts with Western designers
and his flamboyant character, Zaitsev was initially refused permission to
leave the Soviet Union and his first collections were shown abroad without him.
In 1962, Zaitsev's first collection of clothes -- a uniform for female
workers that featured skirts with the flower patterns of traditional Russian
shawls and multicoloured boots -- was rejected by Soviet authorities.
"The colours were too bright and contrasted with the greyness of Soviet
everyday life, where an individual should not differ from the rest of
society," Zaitsev said in an interview with AFP in 2018.
But the collection, nonetheless, attracted international attention. In
1963, French magazine Paris Match became the first Western media outlet to
describe Zaitsev as a pioneer of Soviet fashion.
Celebrity clients
Born into a poor family with a mother who worked as a cleaner, he initially
was barred from attending a top-flight university because his father, taken
captive by the Nazis during World War II, had, like other former
prisoners-of-war, been labelled an "enemy of the people" and sentenced to 10
years in a labour camp.
"When I was a child, my mother taught me embroidery so I wouldn't roam the
streets without purpose," he told AFP.
"In the evenings I would pick flowers with girls on Lenin Avenue to draw
them and recreate them in embroidery. That's how I began my adventure in art."
He studied at a vocational college until the age of 18 and then went on to
the unglamorous Moscow Textile Institute.
"During my studies, I lived with a family whose children I looked after.
The apartment was tiny and I slept on the floor under the table," he recalled.
Later in life, between 2007 and 2009, he presented a popular television
show called "The Verdict of Fashion," in which stylists dressed participants
in the latest street looks.
He counted several Russian movie stars, singers and the ex-wife of
President Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila, among his clients.(AFP)
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