Wings Studio Debuts Demi-Couture Collection ‘The Cure for Death’ at Kazakhstan Fashion Week

By Jesse Scott

Amidst the famous brands and frenetic schedule of the 35th Kazakhstan Fashion Week, which saw twenty-six international designers present runway shows over two evenings, a young label from Khabarovsk, Russia stepped into the spotlight. Wings Studio, the project of Tatiana Vasileva and Denis Burlakov, dazzled guests with a dramatic collection entitled “The Cure for Death.” Set to a mystic soundtrack that combined seemingly sacred chants with a building electric synth, the Wings Studio show saw models in deftly layered looks saunter down the runway with a peculiarly ominous poise. 

The catwalk seemed swathed in foreboding. Partially due to the meticulous supernatural make-up, the show’s protagonists inhabited a space somewhere between the living and the dead, embracing their mortality, and whatever lies in the void beyond, with a calm certainty. Ensconced in tinted sunglasses and golden skeletal jewelry, they almost seemed to be smirking at us, relishing the inevitability of death and basking in its throes.

The show drew attention to the pulsating creative energy and emerging fashion scene in a far-east region of Russia that is little-known internationally. Over 5,000 miles and an eight and a half hour flight east of Moscow, Khabarovsk is the capital of a region larger than France and England combined but with a population of just 1.4 million. This massive geographical divide means that, despite inhabiting a thriving modern metropolis, designers here find it very difficult to get noticed either by Moscow (Russia’s fashion capital) or by the global community. 

That makes Wings Studio’s third consecutive inclusion in Kazakhstan Fashion Week particularly impressive, and it’s an opportunity that the brand’s founders are determined to take advantage of. “It’s a great opportunity to show our work to a different audience, in a different country, with a different mentality,” Vasileva told Marie Claire Kazakhstan. “In this way we can test our designs…analyze how much the foreign public will like it, and prepare to enter the international market.” 

Vasileva has described the brand’s aesthetic as futuristic-minimalism. That approach was on full display this season, as familiar silhouettes, notable for their elegant draping and deceptively complex details, put a bold avant-garde twist on staples of a contemporary wardrobe. Golden adornments, in the form of rib cages, backbones, shoulder blades, and anatomically correct depictions of the heart, were simple in form yet surrealist in an exquisitely Schiaparellian sense. Patterns and prints, many inspired by the human body and motifs from nature, served as powerful forms of self-expression while also hinting at a certain harmony within the natural life cycles of our universe. 

Two mottos central to Wings Studio are “не как всех” (not like everyone else) and “Ангелы одеваются здесь” (angels dress here).  The synthesis between these two concepts offers perhaps the best synopsis of the collection. Transforming everyday pieces into fierce statements with distinct personalities, Wings Studio’s “The Cure for Death” collection proposes a unique and liberating way for modern women to construct their wardrobes. Simultaneously, it presents a sartorial worldview on an elevated plane of enlightenment; the Wings woman, one could suggest, is equally at peace with life and death and moves through her world unfazed by the struggles of the everyday.