Saint-Tokyo: Asymmetric women's clothing from St. Petersburg

IN THE WEEKLY RUBRIC "NEW MARK" Wonderzine presents young designers and tells where and how you can buy their things. Our hero this week is Yuri Pitenin, founder of the Saint-Tokyo brand in St. Petersburg.

Own brand Pytenin founded in 2012. Its name Saint-Tokyo refers to two important cities for the designer: Yuri spent much of his youth in Japan, and studied in St. Petersburg at the University of Technology and Design. Eastern culture influenced the designer, instilling in him an interest in experiments with a cut: Yuri manages to combine in the collections basic things with complex, architectural structures. At Saint-Tokyo, you can find asymmetrical skirts, short tops, silk dresses, sweatshirts and sweaters with loud "DON'T" and "HOPE" as well as basic trousers, tops, jackets and shorts. By the way, prints on natural silk were developed for the Saint-Tokyo summer collection by Petersburg artist-illustrator Katya Khot.

Now Pytenin is working on women's collections and a basic knitwear line unisex, which will include T-shirts and sweatshirts, as well as taking private orders. The collection of the spring-summer 2015 brand could be seen at the St. Petersburg Aurora Fashion Week six months ago, and the autumn-winter 2015-2016 could be seen at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia in Moscow, where Petenin plans to appear at least three more seasons.

I like to see how my collections change in the process of work: I continue to improve them until the moment when the model comes to the podium. I can redo something two seconds before the release. For me, it is important to show a quality product. In each collection I connect two different points of view on fashion. So, the European design is intended to emphasize the female figure, and the Asian one - on the contrary, to deform it. For me it is important that a girl is still visible behind the unusual cut. In this sense, what Nicolas Ghesquières does is close to me. In the future, I want to develop two lines: the main, the podium, that is, the line of my studio, and the second, democratic. The second one already has a working title - KIOSK.

Where to buy Saint-Tokyo items

Brand items are sold in Petersburg in the SUBBOTA showroom, as well as in the 8 store. The average cost of things: 6000 - 15 000 rubles. Hand-embroidered items made from silk will cost more.