Russian Lessons – Style

2023 is coming to an end, and we’ve seen some big trends throughout the year. First, so-called quiet luxury came into fashion, largely inspired by the TV series Descendants. In the middle of the year, the minds of fashion editors and influencers were captured by Barbie pink in the wake of the popularity of the film about the most famous doll. By the end of 2023, another current appeared – Slavic core. Let’s figure out what it is.

The translation of Slavic core is quite obvious – it is a reference to the aesthetics of countries with a Slavic background. And here we are talking about the winter variation. The basis of this trend is built on fur coats, fur hats, mittens and other attributes of our usual style. Now in fashion are the things that our mothers, grandmothers, the heroines of Bunin’s stories wore – in general, Russian (and not only) women of several generations. The trend itself, like most fashion trends in recent years, originated in TikTok. Bloggers paid attention to the luxury inherent in Slavic culture and found relevance in it. If at the beginning of the year quiet luxury of restrained shades was fashionable, then at the end of the year it was replaced by deliberate luxury.

Videos with the hashtag #SlavicGirl received more than 600 million views at the time of publication. Foreign women dress in elements of the “good life” typical of the 2000s, complementing them with expensive bags and bright jewelry – earrings, rings and pendants made of yellow gold take the lead here.

In general, Eastern European culture has been “circulating” in the Internet space for a long time. Brutalism, Soviet and Russian post-punk, the aesthetics of panel houses and working-class suburbs gained popularity on TikTok a couple of years ago. For example, the song “The Vessel” (with lyrics by Boris Ryzhey) by the Belarusian group “Molchat Doma” broke into the world charts back in 2020 and gained popularity among foreign audiences. Over the past couple of months, Western TikTok has discovered another Russian-language song – “My Marmalade” by Katya Lel. Users record songs and dances to it, which caused a new wave of interest in the single in the 2000s.

Some fashionistas take the Slavic core aesthetic further and turn to traditional headdresses – for example, scarves. There was already a fashion for such scarves: in 2019, rapper A$AP Rocky released a video for the single Babushka Boi and set the trend for wearing a scarf on the head. Western publications and bloggers called this style Babushka. Obviously, the Slavic core trend will look most relevant in winter. The look in this style is a fur coat, a fur hat or scarf, a muff or mittens, and boots. When choosing things, do not forget about another, already social trend – eco-consumption. Therefore, it is probably worth choosing fur coats, hats and mittens from eco-fur. So that beauty does not require unnecessary sacrifices.

Ilya Petruk