Why a male stylist?
For me men’s images have always been the most interesting. And if you start to dig into the history of many “female” elements of the wardrobe, then to a greater extent they have passed to us from the male. Therefore, the whole history of fashion is very tightly intertwined with men’s clothing and shoes. Men’s fashion is not as changeable in time as women’s. It is more permanent. Men both wore suits and continue to, jeans with T-shirts, trousers with jackets. The trends for silhouette, colour, texture, length and width are changing. My help as a stylist in working with a man’s wardrobe is precisely to adapt it to modern trends, taking into account the comfort of the client.
How do you feel about the fact that women’s trends are moving into men’s (cosmetics, dresses, for example)? Your opinion about Leon Dame – is it a hype of modern fashion or tasteless?
The main trend that I have been observing lately is gender identity in collections. More and more elements in the wardrobe can belong to both a woman and a man. I’m not talking about the presence of dresses in men’s collections of designers for more than a year. In general now a lot of seemingly purely feminine attributes appear in men’s collections: ruffles, cosmetics, costume jewelry. But if you remember the history again, men already have experienced all this: wigs, lace, pantaloons, and high-heeled shoes.
I personally like Leon Dame very much. He is a product of his time. A little androgyny, a little aggression and with his idiosyncrasies.
What is your favourite designer?
I love Christian Dior for his unique story. I can’t say that I’m in love with all the brand’s collections, but the founder himself was the greatest couturier. I love Jill Sander for the purity and simplicity of forms. And, of course, the fashion house Maison Margiela for its unconventionality, the ability to work with form and texture, for the vision of collections in general.
You are currently working with models on the set as a stylist. Do you compare their behaviour with the times when you were a model yourself? What has changed?
Now the working conditions of the models are much more comfortable than they were in my time. We were not always given a makeup artist, and even more so a stylist for the shoot. But a person’s behaviour does not depend on the year of his birth, but on education and understanding of the measure of his responsibility at work.
I worked as a model from about 1999 to 2009 and even now some brands and stores sometimes invite me to shoot. Previously, catalogues, look books and even more content were rarely removed. There were no phones, so customers organised screenings and a kind of editorial shooting. It was always more pleasant to work for magazines because there were makeup artists.
Bayer is a new word for many. What exactly do you do?
Bayer to Bayer is different. The buyer in large stores studies in depth purchases and previous orders. This is the person who decides what you will see on the shelves and hangers in the store. And he is guided not by his own desires, but by requests and analysis of sales data.
I work as a personal buyer. More precisely, it worked before the pandemic, when all the borders of the world were open and it was fashionable to bring anything at the request of the client.
Has the pandemic changed the fashion a lot?
The pandemic has changed the world dramatically. And how she changed the fashion, we will still be watching for more than a year. We have seen both shooting collections through a webcam, and shows without guests, and the trend for aesthetic home images. As often happens after global catastrophes, wars, depressions, fashion is revived and goes to another level. Humanity wants to be happy, to see everything bright, positive and festive. It is quite possible that the collections of the 2022 season will also be very festive.
Text by K. Mironova
Photo provided by E. Ivaykina
