Ksenia Schneider, Ukrainian fashion designer

Ksenia Schneider started designing clothes for the same reason that most of her colleagues could not find the clothes she would like to wear. Since childhood, she sewed things for herself and friends, graduated from Kiev National University of Technology and Design and studied at Central Saint Martins and Istituto Marangoni. However, the designer says that she received her main knowledge not from universities, but from her own experience and mistakes.

In 2004, she founded the brand X'U. “Then in Ukraine there was no idea about democratic clothes, especially with the mark Made in UA. Many people from the fashion environment did not take me seriously, because I didn’t sew custom-made dresses to the floor, but simply released collections of everyday knitwear. believe it, but we were the first in Ukraine to start making books, organize afterparty after the shows and do other things that now, thank God, have become the norm, ”she says. The X'U brand exists now: collections within its framework are produced out of seasons and sold over the Internet.

In 2011, the designer launched the brand Ksenia Schnaider - together with her husband Anton Schneider, art director of the design bureau S-I-L-A. "I remember it was the third month of pregnancy, I felt so tired of everything, it seemed to accumulate for years, and I did not have the strength. I decided to take a break. It was great: for almost a year nobody criticized me and did not praise. And then I started making the collection, and it became obvious to me that it could not be released under the X'U brand. Things looked ascetic and stern. When creating it, I thought about hermits and people who don't care how they look, and those who do not follow the fashion at all and find their happiness in another. "

In the designer's collections, there are puritan white and black dresses on the floor, and more relaxed things, such as camouflage sweatshirts. “Ksenia Schnaider is clothes about clothes. Uniforms. We find our inspiration in clothes, in its codes, functions, cut. We don’t flirt with the past and don’t run into the future, but we try to be in the present. I don’t try to create a colorful facade, for which our buyer will hide or will seem better than he is. On the contrary, choosing Ksenia Schnaider, you need to prepare to be yourself. We are also trying to change the understanding of unisex clothing. Now unisex is clothing that makes everyone the same, as if sexless. We try to make it so that A man of the same style and cut, the man remained a man, and the woman looked feminine, "she says. By the way, among the rules Schneider is to sew so high-quality and versatile things that they could serve their owners for ten years. We like this approach.

The plans for Ksenia Schneider - brand extension. The designer wants people all over the world to whom her brand is congenial to have the opportunity to attend events and buy Ksenia Schnaider clothes. Both that, and another is quite real. Anyone could initially watch the designer’s shows: first, she conducted them online, and the last show of her brand, already at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, in real-time mode, filmed and uploaded the Nowfashion website. Well, clothes can be sold in online stores, which have recently favored designers from Ukraine.