Authors

Discussion

This paper examines Ukrainian fashion as a site of cultural resilience and epistemic transformation across three historical stages: late socialism, post-independence, and wartime. Fashion, often overlooked in academic discourse, provides a valuable lens through which to trace how Ukrainian identity was negotiated under Soviet domination, rearticulated after independence, and asserted as a form of cultural sovereignty during war.

The analysis adopts a combined postcolonial and decolonial framework. It draws on Western postcolonial theory (Bhabha’s hybridity, Spivak’s subalternity), Ukrainian postcolonial scholarship (Hundorova’s transit culture, Chernetsky’s epistemic justice), and global decolonial thought (Biedarieva’s ambicoloniality, Mignolo and Tlostanova’s epistemic disobedience, Botanova’s cultural sovereignty). These frameworks reveal fashion not only as aesthetic production but as a medium of knowledge and agency.

During the late socialist period (1960s-1980s), Ukrainian fashion operated in an ambilcolonial condition, simultaneously integrated into and subordinated by Soviet cultural policy. State-sponsored designers such as Hertz Mepen and Lidiya Avdeyeva worked within prestigious institutions but lost individual authorship under the generic label of “Soviet fashion.” Independent designers, including Liudmyla Semykina and Hanna Vintoniak, had limited aesthetic agency through reinterpretations of folk traditions, subtly sustaining national identity within ideological constraints.

The independence period (1991-2013) markes a transition from imperial subordination to epistemic agency. Within what Tamara Hundorova defines as transit culture, Ukrainian designers navigated a hybrid space shaped by Western influence, Soviet remnants, and revived folk traditions. Figures such as Lilia Poustovit and Roksolana Bogutska began to articulate a modern Ukrainian aesthetic, signaling a broader move toward cultural self-definition.

The wartime period (2014-present) markes a shift toward conscious decoloniality. Fashion functions as a form of cultural sovereignty and resistance, asserting Ukraine as a subject of knowledge rather than a peripheral object. Designers such as Ksenia Schnaider, Bevza, and Frolov reclaim traditional crafts and symbols to communicate resilience and national self-determination. Since the 2022 full-scale invasion, fashion has served as a medium of solidarity, remembrance, and geopolitical agency.

The paper argues that Ukrainian fashion charts a trajectory from imperial containment to epistemic emancipation. It demonstrates how fashion has evolved from a Soviet-controlled display into a decolonial practice that restores authorship, reclaims visibility, and positions Ukraine as an active producer of cultural modernity.