Turning the Fabric of Fashion Inside Out: Lilia Litkovska Brings Ukrainian Avant-Garde Art, Exposed Construction and the Power of Reinvention into Focus

A vividly hued new creation by designer Lilia Litkovska in Paris. Photograph (above) and cover picture by Brittany Scott for DAM.

We look back at one of the highlights of Paris Fashion Week, Spring/Summer 2027, the Ukrainian designer Lilia Litkovska's new collection which challenges the conventions of dressing with avant-garde art, experimental tailoring and adaptable silhouettes. Inspired by artist Borys Kosarev, she exposes the beauty of construction while reflecting on the realities of war and the enduring power of creativity to transform how we see ourselves and the world. Story by Isabella Lancellotti. Feature photography by Brittany Scott 

One of the intriguing transformative

designs presented in Paris. 

Photograph: Brittany Scott

LILIA Litkovska presented her Stricha collection at Café Beaubourg, facing the Centre Pompidou in Paris.  The show brought Ukrainian artistic heritage into dialogue with the city's creative culture, while asking an intriguing question: who decides what a garment is supposed to be?

The designer explored the relationship between appearance and identity through experimental tailoring, fragmented imagery and garments designed to be worn in more than one way. A blouse could become a dress, a cape transforms into a coat, and seams that most designers would conceal become integral to the design.

Café Beaubourg, a place for conversation opposite one of Paris's principal centres of contemporary art, provided a fitting backdrop for a collection concerned with the unexpected connections between people, cultures and ideas.

The title comes from a dialect of Ukraine's Hutsul region, where stricha means a meeting or encounter. Litkovska describes the small but significant moments in which we first see one another, before appearances give way to a deeper understanding. “Everything begins with a meeting. Before words, before names, a glance, a gesture, a way of standing in a room.”

It is an idea that translates naturally into fashion, where the first impression is often visual, formed through silhouette, texture and the way a person inhabits their clothes. But Litkovska is interested in what happens after that initial encounter, when familiar appearances begin to shift. 

The artistic reference point was Borys Kosarev, one of the founding figures of the Ukrainian avant-garde

Voluminous proportions and adaptable 

pieces made for an experimental yet 

very wearable collection.

Photograph: Brittany Scott 

The artistic reference point was Borys Kosarev, one of the founding figures of the Ukrainian avant-garde. His experimental portraits and masks fragmented the human face into geometric planes, challenging the notion that identity could be captured through a single, coherent image. 

Litkovska translated this visual language into garments through prints, appliqué and collage, incorporating angular compositions into a collection already preoccupied with the possibilities of breaking things apart and putting them together differently.

Rather than simply reproducing Kosarev's artwork, she adopted his experimental approach. Traditional Ukrainian homespun textiles were turned inside out, while seams and construction details were deliberately exposed. 

Familiar silhouettes were similarly reconfigured: voluminous blouses extended into long dresses, and capes assumed the proportions of coats. The clothes revealed their own construction instead of presenting an immaculate exterior, giving the collection a graphic, architectural quality without sacrificing its sense of movement.

“I believe the construction is more honest than the silhouette,” Litkovska explains. “The seam, the cut, the place where two pieces meet and strain against each other. I do not want to conceal these. I want them spoken aloud, made part of the garment's own language.”

It is a compelling distinction. In luxury fashion, where craftsmanship is frequently celebrated through painstakingly perfected surfaces, Litkovska directs attention to the process itself. The visible seam becomes evidence of how a garment has been assembled, while its exposed interior suggests that what is usually hidden may be just as interesting as what is presented to the world.

Shaped by four generations of tailoring, Litkovska combines traditional craftsmanship with a willingness to challenge its conventions. 

Lilia Litkovska combines fine tailoring 

with an avant-garde sensibility.

Photograph: Brittany Scott

This approach has been central to the designer since the label was founded in Kyiv in 2009. Shaped by four generations of tailoring and garment-making in her family, Litkovska combines an understanding of traditional craftsmanship with a willingness to challenge its conventions. 

Her guiding principle, “there is no wrong side”, is not merely a slogan but a practical design philosophy: pieces can be reversed, deconstructed and restructured, inviting the wearer to discover alternative ways of using them.

The concept extends to the smallest detail. Each garment leaves the atelier with its label covered by a strip of white fabric, symbolically leaving space for the next chapter to be written by its owner. As the designer explains:

“Once a garment leaves the atelier, it is no longer entirely ours. It enters someone else's life, body, and imagination. We invite the person who wears it to become its co-author, to give it a new interpretation, to transform it through their own gestures, and ultimately to decide what the garment can become.”

This notion of shared authorship offers an alternative to fashion's familiar emphasis on designer signatures and prescribed styling. Rather than dictating a finished image, Litkovska provides the framework for personal interpretation. The wearer becomes an active participant in the creative process, bringing individual experience and imagination to the garment.

Since joining the official Paris Fashion Week calendar in 2017, the designer has developed an international presence while maintaining a strong connection to her Ukrainian origins. That connection carries particular significance in this collection, where the exploration of what remains essential takes place against the reality of war.

“During the war, a person does not simply survive, there is still a choice, again and again, to want, to love, to create, to open a door to someone new”

On the runway at the Cafe Beaubourg,

the models walked between the tables.

Photograph: Brittany Scott

At the Paris show, the words “SET MISSING. DESTROYED BY MISSILE” were above the runway. They introduced an abrupt and devastating reminder of the destruction confronting Ukraine. They are difficult to reconcile with the beauty and ingenuity of fashion, and that is precisely the point. Litkovska refuses to separate her creative practice from the circumstances in which it exists.

“Perhaps this is what life in Ukraine has taught me, more than anything else could have,” she says. “When the ground itself is uncertain, you stop mistaking decoration for substance. You learn, with a clarity that almost hurts, what is truly yours and, from everything you own, what is worth carrying into whatever comes next.”

The collection's message is therefore more nuanced than a simple celebration of resilience. It concerns the decision to remain receptive to life, even when circumstances encourage withdrawal: “During the war, a person does not simply survive, there is still a choice, again and again, to want, to love, to create, to open a door to someone new.”

That spirit informs the collection's broader vision. Through her Kyiv flagship, Litkovska Basecamp, the designer also supports a cultural programme of exhibitions, encounters and dialogue, extending her interest in the meeting of ideas beyond the runway. Fashion, in this context, is part of a larger conversation about how people express themselves, preserve their histories and imagine what comes next.

With Stricha, Litkovska brings these concerns together through clothes that are technically considered yet deliberately open-ended. The collection's most interesting proposition is that transformation need not mean abandoning what came before. Sometimes, it requires only a different perspective and the freedom to turn something inside out and perhaps discover what was there all along.

See the full collection from the Litkovska Spring/Summer 2027 Paris show 

To Understand the History of European Culture Start with the Minoans, Not the Ancient Greeks

Ruins of the ancient Minoan settlement in Gournia, Crete.  Photograph: Georgios Tschilis/Shutterstock

By Ellen Adams, King's College London

The Minoan culture was the first highly complex society on modern European soil, with palaces, writing, stunning art – and even flushing toilets. The Minoans lived in the bronze age (circa 3000-1200BC) on the Mediterranean island of Crete, which served as a stepping stone between Europe, Africa and Asia.

My new book, The Minoans, presents key features of their archaeology, including architecture, art, religion, writing, bureaucracy and the economy. It explores how this pioneering European civilisation has influenced western culture – and how Minoan culture has been reconstructed, re-imagined and represented in museum displays.

Traditionally, the ancient Greeks have been viewed as the fountainhead of European civilisation, but Minoan culture was flourishing many hundreds of years earlier. Despite this expanse of time, there was a loose dialogue between them: the Minoans influenced the Mycenaeans, who themselves were early Greeks, and the later classical Greeks indicate some “memory” of the Minoans, as filtered down through their myths.

For example, in the later Greek stories (from the first millennium BC), Crete is closely associated with bulls. Zeus took the form of a bull when he seized the Phoenician princess Europa and forced her to the island to initiate the Minoan bloodline. She bore Minos whose wife, Pasiphae, submitted to her passion for Poseidon’s bull, producing the minotaur.

In Minoan art, bulls are everywhere. Archaeologists have found bronze age ritual libation vessels – used for pouring liquid sacrifices to the gods – crafted into the shape of a bull’s head, and large gold rings depicting people leaping over bulls. The echoes of history, myth and ritual seem to have rippled through the generations, to later be reproduced and re-imagined by the ancient Greeks.

A bull fresco from Knossos Palace in Crete. Pecold/Shutterstock

It is therefore essential for people who want to understand the history of Europe to study the influence the Minoans have had on the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans – in particular, the evidence coming from the great digs conducted on the island in the early 20th century. These include the excavations by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans at Knossos, Crete, a vast site with complexity that may lend itself to the Greek labyrinth myth.

While the image of the bull is particularly widespread here, there is little association between this creature and women, as later appears in the myths. Women are linked with other animals, though, such as serpents, as shown by the snake goddess figurines that Evans found in the Palace of Knossos in 1903.

Snakes in Minoan art

These snake goddesses were found hidden in large stone-lined pits, in a very fragmentary state. Numerous riches were in this deposit: hundreds of shells, clay and stone vessels, clay seal impressions (used for documentation), Linear A inscriptions (a writing script) and animal bones.

The remains of five or six female figurines were found, but only two have been reconstructed. They have become icons of Minoan culture and poster girls for Crete, standing out due to their eye-catching costumes. These are tight, corseted jackets that leave the breasts bare, with floor-length full skirts – their heaviness serving to emphasise the exposed breasts even more.

The remains of the figurines found in the Palace of Knossos in 1903. Wiki Commons

The slightly larger one is a matronly figure with a tall, conical hat. Her snake-entwined arms are held at around 45 degrees, palms up and set approximately in line with her navel. Snakes drape over her as she stares straight ahead.

The second figure raises her bright white arms, bent at the elbow, up and out to her sides, flexed slightly forward. She clutches snakes, and a feline creature balances on her hat.

These figurines offer food for thought about the reconstruction processes that archaeologists undertake. First, Evans gave the title “goddess” to the larger figurine, and “votary” (meaning a worshipper who has taken vows) to the smaller one. This is arbitrary: we cannot know who these figurines represented, whether they were human, as a dignitary or priestess, or divine – we just sense they were VIPs.

Furthermore, when viewing these extraordinary objects in the Heraklion Museum in Crete today, the visitor may be unaware of the extent to which they have been reconstructed, and how much is an early 20th-century creation.

For example, the votary’s head, with its distinctive, wide-eyed stare, is entirely modern, as is her left arm, added soon after she was excavated. The object held in her right hand was broken off – only a very small piece of the original remained in her clenched fist. The reconstruction of snakes as the objects she holds is not so absurd – her sister has them running all over her as a comparison – but recent research has cast some doubt on what she originally held.

In addition to reconstructing the originals, people have also re-imagined these striking figurines in numerous ways – in replicas as souvenirs, as Barbie dolls, in graffiti (particularly in Heraklion) and in advertisements. They have appeared as book covers and inspired modern literature as well as visual and performative art.

Adaptations of them have come to life in poetry, opera, dance and music. A performer led the historical procession as the snake goddess in the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. The Many Lives of a Snake Goddess project, which I am part of, seeks to understand the cultural biographies of these objects. It shows their legacy has been great partly because we have recreated them in such varied ways.

Minoan Crete is important not only because of any claims made for its place as the fountainhead of European civilisation, but also because its art and archaeology have done so much to shape modern culture.

Ellen Adams, Professor in Classical Archaeology and Museum Access, King's College London

The Margaret Preston Retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria is a Revelation

Self-portrait of Margaret Preston from 1930. Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. © Margaret Preston/Licensed by Copyright Agency Australia. Image © Art Gallery of New South Wales. Cover picture of Issey Miyake SS27 in Paris. 

By Sasha Grishin

The National Gallery of Victoria’s Margaret Preston is a breathtaking exhibition. It is Preston as we have never seen her before, and challenges many earlier preconceptions.We see her work in the context of her students/lovers, Bessie Gibson and Gladys Reynell, and her obsession with First Nations art – her adaptations, her collections, and, now, commentaries on her adaptations by Trevor Nickolls and Gordon Bennett, among others.

A much more complex and nuanced image of Preston emerges than in previous exhibitions.

The show is a mixture of a chronological survey with her early still life paintings from the opening decade of the 20th century, then her decorative flower pieces moving to the magnificence of her hand-coloured woodcuts.

There is a desire to bring her art to life: we see her iconic Wheelflower print of 1929, next to the actual woodblock from which it was printed. Her First Nations pieces are shown together with their actual sources of inspiration.

The exhibition is full of these little detective pieces that save the exhibition from being just another Margaret Preston show to make it into the Margaret Preston show for our generation.

The vivid 'Coastal Gums' 

by Matgaret Preston, 1929. 

Private Collection

© Margaret Preston

Licensed by Copyright 

Agency, Australia

A spectacular makeover

Born Margaret Rose McPherson in Adelaide in 1875, she initially trained in Sydney, then at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. She spent many years travelling in Europe, mainly in Germany, France and England.

She first travelled with Betty Davidson and then Gladys Reynell, with both of whom, the NGV catalogue asserts, she had a romantic bond.

She exhibited to limited acclaim, first under the name of Rose McPherson and by 1912 as Margaret McPherson.

Her personal and artistic makeover was as spectacular as it was sudden.

On the last day of 1919, the 44-year-old McPherson falsified her age by eight years and married Lieutenant William George Preston, subsequently a successful businessman. This made her, at least on the marriage certificate, a socially respectable two years younger than her husband, rather than the embarrassing six years older.

She changed her exhibiting name to Margaret Preston and, armed with her husband’s wealth, launched her new career with a massive publicity blitz that was to last until her death in 1963.

Following her marriage, she settled with her husband in the bayside Sydney suburb of Mosman and moved rapidly up the social ladder to become a friend of the publisher Sydney Ure Smith.

Preston was the most articulate and outspoken female artist of her generation, writing frequent articles and giving lectures and interviews.

While always a committed traveller, after her marriage Preston embarked on numerous journeys throughout Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and Europe.

At the height of the Depression, the Prestons moved from Mosman to a 14-acre block in rural Berowra, before returning to the Mosman neighbourhood in 1939, where they remained until her death.

Thea Proctor's Tea Party, 1924 by Margaret

Preston. Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

Purchased in 1942.© Margaret Preston 

A revelation

For me, a revelation of this exhibition is her late stencil pieces, including Christ turning the water into wine (1951) and White gum (1953) where Preston in her mature years is grappling with a host of conceptual problems and exhibits a brilliant technical inventiveness.

While many of the pieces have been seen before, here they gain a new poignancy through their new context.

With over 200 works on display, there is enough to present a comprehensive overview to gain a good understanding of her work and her contribution to Australian art and not an overkill requiring a packed lunch for viewing every print she ever made.

On ‘primative’ art

Although a strong advocate for First Nations art, I feel that Preston’s attitude still sat within the framework of cultural imperialism.

That is, it came from one who had not the slightest doubt in the superiority of her own culture that could absorb “primitive” elements from Indigenous cultures.

She illustrated how a sacred Kimberley dancing board could give you a suggestion for a curtain. In 1924 she boasted,

I have barely altered the design […] The Australian aboriginal has followed the usual abstract designs that are characteristic of the savage […] I have suggested a cushion cover that could be adapted from the design.

Aboriginal Still Life 1940, by Margaret Preston.

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Gift of the

Godfrey Rivers Trust through Miss Daphne 

Mayo, 1940. © Margaret Preston

In 1925 Preston wrote,

In wishing to rid myself of the mannerisms of a country other than my own, I have gone to the art of a people who have never seen or known anything different from themselves, and were accustomed to always use the same symbols to express themselves.

[…]

It is on the primitive natural forms that we must depend. In returning to primitive art it should be remembered that it is to be used as a starting point only for a renewal of growth, and a gradual selection must take place to arrive at the culmination.

Over the decades, Preston’s attitude to First Nations art matured as she travelled thousands of kilometres to view rock art and art in various communities. But the art remained a quarry from which a “civilized” artist could plunder elements from which to create an “authentic” Australian national art.

Preston’s ideas on a national art were naïve, but, as shown by this exhibition, she did create a powerful and memorable oeuvre.

Margaret Preston is at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia until January 31 2027.

Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University