Runway
Ukrainian designer Viktor Anisimov's SS27 collection turns the chaotic, mismatched clothing worn by fleeing civilians into a haunting yet beautiful meditation on how people cling to identity and dignity amid war.
Updated 11:41 am EDT, Sep 12, 2026
Published 11:40 am EDT, Sep 12, 2026
Photo Courtesy: Ukrainian Fashion Week
Runway Photographer: Volodymyr Bosak
Backstage Photographer: Serhiy Khandusenko
Special Thanks: Yelyzaveta Ushcheka
Runway
Ukrainian designer Viktor Anisimov's SS27 collection turns the chaotic, mismatched clothing worn by fleeing civilians into a haunting yet beautiful meditation on how people cling to identity and dignity amid war.
Updated 11:41 am EDT, September 12, 2026
Published 11:40 am EDT, September 12, 2026
Photo Courtesy: Ukrainian Fashion Week
Runway Photographer: Volodymyr Bosak
Backstage Photographer: Serhiy Khandusenko
Special Thanks: Yelyzaveta Ushcheka
Ukrainian designer Viktor Anisimov's SS27 collection turns the chaotic, mismatched clothing worn by fleeing civilians into a haunting yet beautiful meditation on how people cling to identity and dignity amid war.
Updated 11:41 am EDT, September 12, 2026
Published 11:40 am EDT, September 12, 2026
Photo Courtesy: Ukrainian Fashion Week
Runway Photographer: Volodymyr Bosak
Backstage Photographer: Serhiy Khandusenko
Special Thanks: Yelyzaveta Ushcheka
Viktor Anisimov is a fascinating Ukrainian fashion designer. He is typically known for utilitarian, military‑influenced collections all packed with socially conscious themes. He was educated in Kyiv, and his training is rooted in industrial design and technical garment construction at the Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design (KNUTD).
After serving in the Russian military, which only demonstrates the unutterable irony of life, he started running a construction business in Donetsk. It was only in 1997 that a friend who owned a beauty salon asked him to make metal clothing hangers for a hairdressing competition that fashion came into his life. Viktor crafted ornate, sculptural hangers shaped like dresses. The work was so visually striking that he was invited to Ukrainian Fashion Week, where he created his first collection of black, body‑hugging dresses. They were famously well received, and Viktor became hooked.
What Viktor did in his SS27 collection is ingenious, but in a way that is also heartbreaking and somber. The theme of this collection is a portrait of people simply surviving a catastrophic war, with his clothes documenting how people react through trauma, chaos, and reconstruction. We think it is a brilliant idea and such a powerful point of view. One can imagine during the Blitz in Britain, which was extensively documented, the terror of waking up in the middle of the night, pulling on whatever clothes or robes were at hand, and rushing to hopeful safety in cellars or underground in tube stations. The sheer terror and the later realization that potentially what they had on their back would be the only clothes left for them.
Kyiv and most of Ukraine know this situation all too well. Viktor treats his designs as a normal part of everyday life for his fellow citizens. He studied photographs of people taken in the aftermath of Russian missile and drone attacks on residential buildings. He analyzed how people from different places, with different lives and habits, may suddenly find themselves side by side. Some people had time to get dressed, putting on clothes they had prepared in advance, while others were outside in pajamas, robes or coats.
This randomness becomes one of the collection’s key images. In the collection, relaxed clothes typically worn in the home were juxtaposed with military elements. Pajamas were fitted with military-style patch pockets. Classic coats were combined with functional military details. Shirts, shorts, and pajamas were interspersed throughout the collection.
The color palette, shaped by the war that influenced it, pairs expensive fabrics and prints with black, grey, and khaki. Viktor plays off the randomness of people’s dress as they flee bombs, creating sudden flashes of color. He purposely does not let these color accents to dominate. Instead, they emerge almost accidentally, representing people’s normal lives frozen in a dark reality.
What is also fascinating about this collection is the technique of using patches, unfinished edges, tears, and a deliberate boiling treatment applied artificially to age the clothes. Fabrics in the collection include leather, merino wool, canvas, cotton, linen, nettle, nylon, and coat and suiting fabrics.
One of my favorite men’s outfits was a boiled, aged leather jacket combined with a comfortable black T-shirt and ripped, torn camo slacks. This look was gorgeously crafted, and you can see the sartorial care in the deliberate patches and rips. Without being disrespectful to the situation, these clothes are chic, and frankly, yes, I would wear them because they would not only be beautiful, but they would also support the message Viktor wishes to share.
Another fascinating outfit was a black woman’s dress shaped to look like bed sheets wrapped around the body and tied in haste. Regardless of its original inspiration, the dress was beautifully draped and shaped to the woman’s body. The tied elements added pathos and interest to the dress and elevated it artistically.
This is not a collection about war as a separate subject. It is a collection about people living through war and how they look after the shock of the first seconds of a bombing. What did these devastated people manage to save? What did they wear as they ran out of their homes? Viktor tried to show us how his fellow Ukrainians tried to remain themselves through fashion as their world was destroyed and disappeared. Think about that strange, almost unbearable moment when, amid the ruins, you suddenly notice how beautiful a coat looks on a person.
This collection is shaped by the paradox of pain and fascination, fear and beauty, randomness and intention, which draws the audience into an emotional response to the clothes and the situations that inspired them.
Recovering from an obsession with Italian-designed menswear, Alfonso decided to take a deeper look into women’s fashion to see how our relationship among clothing, society, and business has changed. Educated as an economist with an MBA, he travels between Chicago, Miami, and Mexico on a search to see what happens next to fashion.
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