Photo Project “Beauty of Generations” for the Independence Day of Ukraine

Our life is a series of big and small hol­i­days, as incor­ri­gi­ble opti­mists say. It so hap­pened that on the eve of a very big and impor­tant hol­i­day — the Inde­pen­dence Day of Ukraine, anoth­er hol­i­day of beau­ty and uni­ty arose, which turned out to be so sig­nif­i­cant for each of its par­tic­i­pants that this expe­ri­ence sim­ply needs to be shared!

Pho­to: Daria Pavlo­va

An ethno­graph­ic pho­to project became a real source of inspi­ra­tion “The beau­ty of gen­er­a­tions”, which com­bines the idea of ​​glo­ri­fy­ing the beau­ty of Ukrain­ian women, through the prism of nation­al clothes, through the con­nec­tion of cen­turies, which lives in each of us with an invis­i­ble thread of wis­dom and expe­ri­ence. It was so impor­tant for our cre­ative team to find that com­mon ground and dive into the moment. As it often hap­pens, the inspi­ra­tion was works of art — paint­ings by Ukrain­ian artists, who showed this incred­i­ble Ukrain­ian beau­ty with such awe, delight, col­or­ful­ness and love. And to imple­ment this idea, we decid­ed to give our mod­ern accom­plished beau­ties an oppor­tu­ni­ty to try on nation­al Ukrain­ian cos­tumes of the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. Def­i­nite­ly a moment of his­toric reunion! Just look how organ­i­cal­ly our con­tem­po­raries look in authen­tic Ukrain­ian out­fits! Watch­ing such a trans­for­ma­tion is like rid­ing a time machine.

BROWSE THE GALLERY:

Dress­ing in full for­ma­tion, and this is an embroi­dered shirt, a skirt or a plakhta, a sun­dress or a corset, belts, an apron, a chip, a scarf, a lot of jew­el­ry and even boots or boots of an authen­tic peri­od, each of our par­tic­i­pants expe­ri­enced a deep emo­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion (that’s right up to goose­bumps)! And you can’t hide this ener­gy, because our great-great-grand­moth­ers, accord­ing to a long tra­di­tion, began to embroi­der shirts only in a good mood, with bright thoughts and prayer on their lips. There­fore, every mod­ern Ukrain­ian woman who had a chance to try on such an out­fit feels the pow­er of such a bless­ing. Such an excep­tion­al approach was to the cre­ation of Ukrain­ian cloth­ing.

And how much undis­guised girl­ish admi­ra­tion, joy and curios­i­ty was dur­ing the fit­ting of vin­tage jew­el­ry! Fil­i­gree ear­rings, threads of nat­ur­al amber, beads made of cool trou­ble­mak­er, ger­dans made of for­eign beads and such cov­et­ed dukachs evoked, we are absolute­ly sure of this, absolute delight both two hun­dred years ago and today!

It turned out to be absolute­ly amaz­ing that on the sec­ond or third attempt, the hands them­selves deft­ly tied bright scarves exact­ly the way our ances­tors wore them! And we could not explain this with any­thing oth­er than the con­nec­tion of gen­er­a­tions.

BROWSE THE GALLERY:

So much grat­i­tude is born in the heart for the fact that our great-great-grand­moth­ers were able to save all this, and our con­tem­po­rary col­lec­tors to col­lect, restore and give the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live and revive this beau­ty with every new touch! And how impor­tant it is to get this emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence and try on the his­to­ry of Ukrain­ian beau­ty. Indeed, it is worth it. Study­ing and exam­in­ing the pat­terns on these age-old cos­tumes, you under­stand that they are the same red thread that runs into the mod­ern world, being reflect­ed in the fash­ion of today, con­nect­ing gen­er­a­tions.

Of course, in order to imple­ment the ethno­graph­ic pho­to project “Beau­ty of Gen­er­a­tions”, we want­ed to move our hero­ines to a place where you can feel the real Ukrain­ian fla­vor. Such an ide­al place was the Radomysl Cas­tle Muse­um, just 100 km from Kyiv, which wel­comed the incred­i­ble Ukrain­ian beau­ties and their noisy cre­ative ret­inue. This is the mag­i­cal place where Ukrain­ian his­to­ry is kept with such awe, care and love!

then our soul turned around and first walked through the incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful land­scape park, then admired the reflec­tion of the majes­tic walls of the cas­tle in a pic­turesque pond, asked for the most inti­mate and most impor­tant thing in the muse­um of the Ukrain­ian icon, trea­sures can be stored in ancient carved chests!

Need­less to say, it is in such an atmos­phere that it is pos­si­ble to most accu­rate­ly cap­ture, show, and most impor­tant­ly feel this con­nec­tion between gen­er­a­tions! Because this is what a beau­ti­ful Ukrain­ian woman looks like, full of incred­i­ble inner strength, ener­gy, with a soft and at the same time patron­iz­ing look.

Beau­ti­ful, brave and wor­thy, like Ukraine itself! Beau­ti­ful Ukrain­ian women, hap­py hol­i­day to us!