KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Fashion shows have returned to Ukraine with a striking statement: war veterans — both men and women — walking the runway with prosthetic limbs.
Ukrainian Fashion Week is being held for the first time since the start of the full-scale war in February 2022, with the headline event on Tuesday in Kyiv featuring these veterans.
As attendees applauded the models, dressed by Ukrainian designers Andreas Moskin and Andriy Bilous, news broke that dozens of people were killed in a Russian missile strike at a military training facility and a nearby hospital in Poltava, about 350 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Kyiv.
“We wanted to show that Ukrainian fashion is adapting to society, for people with amputations who survived the war,” Bilous told The Associated Press. “We are showing that people are unbreakable — without limbs, they can be stylish. They need to be loved, respected, and perceived as an integral part of society.”
Bilous said that he was happy to present his collection at home for the first time in three years. Fashion shows in London, Berlin, Vienna and other European cities had hosted Ukrainian designs while the Kyiv event remained closed.
As models rotated through a spacious dressing and makeup room, they passed numerous reminders of the war: a series of portraits of service members in uniform who are part of the fashion industry, and a display area of military uniforms placed at the center of the exhibition.
A black jacket created by the designer Maria Starchak bears an embroidered design of the Mariupol drama theater, in southern Ukraine, where a large number of civilians were killed in a 2022 Russian airstrike. The site was being used as an air raid shelter.
Iryna Danylevska, co-founder and CEO of Ukrainian Fashion Week, said that the four-day event was aimed at supporting the local industry and also reminding the world of the human cost of war.
“We are trying to keep the voice of Ukraine heard constantly in the world,” Danylevska told the AP.
“If people are tired of the way politicians sound, tired of pictures where houses are destroyed, where soldiers are wounded, then this new information carries a new message,” she said. “It’s a message that this is a country of talented people who are being destroyed just because they want to be Ukrainians. Shouldn’t we help them?”