Global Courant 2023-05-14 01:16:20
Slava Zaitsev, a bubbly and persistent Soviet-era fashion designer, once dubbed the “Red Dior” by the Western press, whose over-the-top theatrical creations and persona made him a go-to couturier at home, died April 30 in Shchyolkovo , Russia. He turned 85.
His old friend Tatiana Sorokko, a Russian-born model and journalist, said his death in a hospital was caused by internal bleeding caused by an ulcer.
Mr. Zaitsev died just two days before Valentin Yudashkin, a student of his who was also known for his lavish creations, and who was more successful in the West than he was, died of cancer at the age of 59.
Mr. Zaitsev brought color, sparkle and opulence to a generation that had grown up in the drab Soviet grey, the uniform of the proletariat, mixing Western bling with nods to traditional Russian costume and nostalgic references to Pasternak and Tolstoy. He was the first designer, in pre-perestroika times, to put his name on his work, which he did for the first time in 1982.
He would go on to design for pop stars, politicians, ballerinas and Olympic athletes. He designed uniforms for Aeroflot, the Russian airline, and for the Moscow traffic police, which he dressed in bright navy blue with light-reflecting stripes.
He loved pomp and circumstance—in the 1980s his fashion company was known for a time as the Theater of Fashion—and he oversaw sold-out weekly shows like a circus maestro, dancing down the runway, dressed in brightly colored silks and waving his hands in the sky.
“Don’t be afraid to look chubby,” he told audiences at a show, The New York Times reported in 1986. “Russia has always been associated with chubby women who embody kindness, hospitality and good food.”
For most Russians during the Gorbachev years, fashion would remain a spectator sport. In 1986, when the average monthly wage was about 190 rubles, a Zaitsev blouse cost 300 rubles or $400 (about $1,100 in today’s dollars). But admission to Theater of Fashion shows, which were open to the public, was only a few rubles.
Still, nothing seemed overdone after decades of hardship, said Karina Dobrotvorskaya, a former president of Condé Nast Russia, who shut down operations there in March 2022. And, she said, because Mr. Zaitsev was isolated from the West for much of his life, his flamboyant clothes weren’t exactly practical.
When he exhibited his work at the Waldorf Astoria on his first visit to New York in 1988, he discovered that his billowy woolen skirts and coats were inconsistent with American tastes and behaviors: too warm for the climate and too bulky for a modern style. working woman who ran in and out of subways and taxis.
“The Soviet Union’s first fashion show has flopped,” Vogue declared. “Nice thought for relaxation; the clothes didn’t do much for women.
Yet the stylish and urbane Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and arguably the most effective ambassador for his reforms, wore Mr. Zaitsev’s more understated outfits to great effect as she toured Russia in the mid- to late-1980s. and toured abroad. . And she was not the only politician who turned to Mr. Zaitsev.
In 1996, when ultra-nationalist arsonist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky was running a failed campaign for the presidency, he dressed exclusively in splashy custom Zaitsev suits that seemed to match his bombast, particularly favoring a crimson tunic with gold buttons (the designer was reported to have voted for the incumbent, Boris Yeltsin). And in 2003, when Lyudmila Putin, then the wife of President Vladimir V. Putin, met Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, she wore a wide-brimmed Zaitsev hat.
“It’s not that he was the greatest designer,” says Alessandra Stanley, co-editor of the online weekly magazine Air Mail and former foreign correspondent for The New York Times who was based in Moscow from 1994 to 1998. “It’s the fact that he could do it at all, the fact that Russians could have their own name designer. He was like the Bolshoi, something they could look at with pride and fondness, even if it was a bit outdated.
In 1994, Mrs. Stanley in The Times on Russia’s quest for a cohesive national identity in the post-Gorbachev era, the nostalgic vision Mr. Zaitsev presented at an exhibition of his winter collection that year. Models were dressed like Tolstoy heroines, with ringlets, hats and flowing coats, and twirled down the runway to Tchaikovsky’s music.
“Most of us never knew such a culture existed,” Mr Zaitsev told Ms Stanley. “We were only shown films about the construction of canals and the conquest of Siberia.”
His show, he added, was like “a dream, something that assures Russia that there will come a time when we can return to something we had in the past, but in a new version.”
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Zaitsev was born on March 2, 1938 in Ivanovo, a gritty city with textile factories northeast of Moscow. His mother, Maria Ivanovna Kokurina, was a washerwoman and cleaner, and his father, Mikhail Yakovlevich Zaitsev, was an entertainer and poet before being drafted into the Soviet Army during World War II.
On his return, Mikhail Zaitsev was sent to one of the many camps set up by Stalin for “traitors to the Motherland, spies and terrorists,” as prisoners of war were described, and as the son of a “traitor to the Motherland.” Slava was not allowed to go to the better schools and universities. He attended a local technical school and graduated from Moscow State Textile University in 1962.
His first work was designing uniforms for workers, but he soon expanded. A collection of mini dresses printed with patterns from traditional costume earned him a reprimand from the authorities, but thrilled a delegation of visiting fashion designers, including Pierre Cardin. It was a bold move, those Minis, a volley against official policy at the time, which declared that “a seemingly harmless imitation of Western fashion can lead to genuine spiritual bankruptcy and moral degradation.”
When in the mid-1960s a Paris newspaper dubbed Mr Zaitsev “the Red Dior,” authorities were again not amused. They banned him from traveling to the West for two decades, stating that “we don’t have one Dior in this fashion house; we have 60.”
Nevertheless, he triumphed and in 1982 he was allowed to link his name to his work, a first for a Russian designer. But for years, shortages of textiles and dyes – as well as shoulder pads, linings and buttons – often limited his fancier visions, much like a clothing industry designed for mass production. And for years he tried on his work on a World War II dressmaker’s dummy.
For his first show under his own name, he remembered in a BBC radio interview in 2018, he designed a women’s collection made of men’s underpants. It was all he could find, he said, and he had them painted in bright colors by the Bolshoi workshops.
“So the models were wearing nothing but underwear, but nobody noticed,” he said. “The collection was beautiful, full of colour. My models were dancing. It was amazing.”
Mr. Zaitsev is survived by his son, Yegor, and two granddaughters. His marriage to Marina Gotesman ended in divorce.
After Mr. Zaitsev’s death, President Putin issued a condolence statement to the designer’s friends and family that was posted on the Kremlin’s website. This is reported by the Russian news agency Tass. In the statement, Mr. Zaitsev credited with turning the domestic fashion industry “into fine art”.
“Through his unique and original works,” said Mr. Putin, “Vyacheslav Zaitsev created a festive atmosphere, bringing joy and the gift of beauty to the people.”
In an interview, Ms. Sorokko said that the celebration of Mr. Zaitsev’s designs would be especially missed in the midst of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. “With his passing,” she said, “it seems that military uniforms are the only form of fashion that will remain in Russia for quite some time.”
