On April 24, the Komi Republic House of Friendship of the Peoples held the III Festival of national and ethnic fashion «Northern style».
It is a unique creative project held in the Komi Republic since 2017. The foundation of the festival is a competition of the best costume collections created by Komi Republic modern designers and masters. This year 37 collections took part in the festival in 5 nominations: «Traditional clothes», «Stage costume», «Modern author’s costume», «Eco fashion» and «Workshop of the Future». Foreign students were able to see various costumes from designers and masters of Syktyvkar, Uhta, Usinsk, Pechora towns and Syktyvdin, Sysolsk, Kortkeros, Priluz, Udorsk, Ust-Tsilam districts of the Komi Republic and Arkhangelsk region.
– By attending such events with students, we are creating a new format of communication and a new form of acquaintance with national culture and ethnic fashion. When we see a man in a national suit, we identify his nationality, because each nation has its own style, culture and history, – noted Valentina Maltseva, University’s Head of the Centre for Patriotic Education Department of Youth Policy.
At the Festival we saw the integration of ethnic fashion of Finno-Ugric and other nations in the general context of the fashion industry, a high level of professional mastery, both for young designers and for professional masters. Schoolchildren and students, who from an early age connected their lives with arts, presented their guests with their fashion show talent, reviving traditions and instilling a lively interest in northern-style culture in the visitors of the festival. It is wonderful that the festival has evolved into an annual event where we, spectators, can see professional, creative and personal development of participants’ potential and designer’s unique style.
Foreign students liked the workshop of the future – the collection of young designers, where participants presented their creativity in the format of defiles, clothes and accessories fashion show.
– Such fashion shows are conditions for inter-ethnic cultural exchange and influence of national dress traditions on the development of modern costume, – commented Djalil Mdj, an Albanian Master’s candidate of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship, during fashion show.
Soliman Taha, a 3rd year student of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University Medical Institute, believes that such an event is the exchange of experience and creation of conditions for cooperation of representatives of various professions working in the sphere of fashion, design and applied creativity of the Komi Republic and other regions:
– All models of clothing, especially stylized folk costumes, harmoniously combined with the repertoire program of an individual performer or creative team (theater, folklore, choreographic), I mentally tried on for my homeland, Egypt.
Students of the preparatory department from India who recently came to study in the Komi Republic are just getting used to the amazing and authentic events, and they seem to like it.