2019 - 2020

A fashion line of upcycled secondhand clothes was created through Zoom discussions and a series of physical and virtual walks during the Covid lockdown, by Uzhhorod 7+, a temporary collective consisting of myself and six artists, designers, and filmmakers from Uzhhorod - namely Petro Ryaska, Anton Humenyuk, Anetta Light, Attila Hazhlinsky, Anastasia Kostiv, and Tomi Hazhlinsky. 

Uzhhorod, the capital of the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, has been a city on the margins for centuries, changing hands between the Kingdom of Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. Now it is a city in western Ukraine, bordering Slovakia and near the border with Hungary. In contemporary Ukraine, Uzhhorod has become a stop on a “reversed” 21st-century Silk Road, through which vast amounts of secondhand clothes travel, starting their journey as cast-offs in Western, Northern, and Central Europe: Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, and Poland, and end up spreading deep into Ukraine.

I could not go to Uzhhorod due to the Covid pandemic, but was able to travel mentally, as well as virtually walk the streets, thanks to the internet. With the help of the collective, I oriented myself in a place I had never visited by mapping all the city’s 24 secondhand clothing stores.

Uzhhorod 7+ discussed topics ranging from the logging industry and smuggling across the Ukraine-Slovakia border, to the endangered black stork (Ciconia nigra), recently spotted on the river Uzh, near the elegant district of Maly Galagov, built in the 1930s by Czech Modern architects and proposed as a Unesco heritage site.

These topics crystallized into characters that became the inspiration for the garment designs: Stone Frogs Skipper, Five-in-One, Modern Ghost of Maly Galagov, Black Stork, Suit for Waiting, Promenade Couple.

The seventh garment, Suit for Crossing the Other River (Spiritual Crossing), is designed for crossing another river with the name Uzh. It is located 800km north-east of Uzhhorod, and flows through the city of Pripyat, where on April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 4 reactor exploded.

Materials & Actions: Fashion line of upcycled secondhand clothes, and a map of secondhand clothes shops created during online conversations.

Location: Uzhhorod, Ukraine