Post-Soviet fashion and the Gosha Phenomenon

We all know that fashion trends change at the same speed as Katy Perry changes her haircut. Maybe what you have missed is the fact that in the past year fashion has changed its course into very different places.

When exactly Fashion stopped showing only a highly luxurious and flashy image of itself?

It all started with Gosha Rubchinskiy, a Russian photographer and fashion designer who has “conquered” the public approval in a few seasons, giving rise to a real aesthetic revolution. So, it's time to take stock of the situation about the phenomenon he has triggered, that from now on we're calling it Gosha Phenomenon.

The Gosha Phenomenon is a game changer and it has used simple, strong steps. It's shifted the focus of fashion on young post-Soviet imagination of which Rubchinskiy was pioneer since his collections have won our hearts. From that moment, underground images, skater guys and decadent urban sceneries invaded our world.

Aesthetic standards have changed as the unconventional beauty of models on the runways or THE clothes that are like something out of a teenager's wardrobe. So a new, realistic, rough fashion was born, which draws fully from the streets.

But that's not all. The Gosha Phenomenon makes no secret of the fact it appreciates social media, in particular Tumblr, from which it takes inspiration to get to know dreams and trends of the moment. So, the roles are overturned: fashion doesn't make the rules no more, but youngsters do.

The Gosha Phenomenon seems to have given voice to these realities. When branded opulence and glittering excesses stopped to be attractive for us, new alternative trends have arisen. They have replied to the will to get away from the usual stylistic standards by proposing “affordable”, intentionally “poor” imagery, in which glamour is a parody.

Gosha Rubchinskiy, Demna Gvasalia, Vejas Kruszewski, to name but a few, make the kind of clothes my mother would call “ugly”. Maybe she is right, but fashion houses seem to appreciate them, and the latest September shows comfirmed this.

So, the Gosha Phenomenon definitively won everybody over. How long it will last, we shall never know. The only certain thing is that street culture is cooler than fashion again.