Coming out of fashion – Kommersant

Designer Vyacheslav Zaitsev, the first creator of the world-famous Soviet fashion, died in Shchelkovo at the age of 86. He is the one and only. The short period of the discovery of Soviet Russia and the unprecedented glory of “made in the USSR”, which, fortunately, he survived for a long time, are associated with him.

When artists like Zaitsev die, one has to talk about “a whole era.” The boy from Ivanovo became the first Soviet designer who opened his own fashion house, worked in the West, launched a perfume line in Paris, and became famous under his own name Slava, which sounded at the same time gentle, homely and like a pretentious pseudonym.

He started in the “textile industry”, then at provincial clothing factories, then at the All-Union House of Models on Kuznetsky Most. “Out of desperation, in 1963 I made a collection of quilted jackets for women workers, the collection, of course, was rejected for ideological reasons, but many became interested, among them was a journalist from Paris Match, he published photographs, Pierre Cardin saw them. And in 1965, a French journalist came to my Fashion House on Kuznetsky Most and said that Pierre Cardin had come to Moscow and would like to meet me, ”he told us in an interview.

These were the times when a fashion designer from “wild” Moscow was able to arouse sincere admiration in the fashion capitals, but could not, did not want or did not receive permission to become completely his own there.

He did not change his place and country of work, but if in the West he was called the “Red Cardin”, then we have the “dad of Russian fashion”, younger people studied on his example and around him, who had much more favorable years and happy work in the open the world.

At the sunset of the USSR, Slava Zaitsev turned out to be the same main fashion designer of the country as her main singer, Alla Pugacheva. Everyone knew his name, new politicians were friends with him, and at the height of his fame, he finally opened his own Fashion House. Let not in Paris on Avenue Montaigne, but in Moscow, on Prospekt Mira. The house sparkled with a sign “Glory to Zaitsev” with such large letters that passers-by had to vividly imagine how the whole world admires its brilliant Glory.

In recent years, the glory has faded, the house has grown old, the disease kept it locked up, but it did not affect either the mood or the plans.

Our last interview with him took place in his estate in the village of Kablukovo. It seemed that we would again talk about the unique Russian crafts, the special way of Russian design and the secondary nature of European. But to the question of whether he felt before and whether he feels now that somewhere there was and is a big world in which there is a fashion that he dreamed about, Zaitsev replied that France remains the image of a fashionable country for him.

By that time, he was very skeptical about all Moscow’s claims to the title of fashionable capital: “Russia has often been fashionable, but it has never been a country of fashion.”

It was easy to hear his own weariness in this, his disappointment at how much was expected of him and how little he got done. But in fact, he was not going to stop, his sketches, which we looked at, were quite modern. He could no longer wait for the arrival of Cardin, but he continued to use his chance exactly in the situation in which he was.

In his white three-story house, everything was saturated with the spirit of the 1980s, the triumphant era. This was evident in the solemnity of the stairs, and in the combination of white and black with metal, and in the special elegance of the bedspreads and curtains, as if designed for another foreign House of Russian Culture. In this hermit’s house there was both ridiculous pathos, and amazing old-fashionedness, and incredible honesty of style. What will you say on the day of his death? “Glory, Zaitsev” – nothing to add to this.

Olga Mikhailovskaya, Alexey Tarkhanov