Russian designer Slava Zaitsev, dubbed the “Soviet Christian Dior” and “Soviet fashion czar”, has died in Scelkovo, Moscow Region, aged 85. The news of his disappearance, which took place on Sunday 30 April, was given by the Russian media, specifying that Zaitsev had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2016.
An admirer of Italian fashion, Zaitsev made it his starting point. Using from cotton to wool, passing through felt, he has recreated a style very close to the Italian one, especially as regards suits and footwear. The designer was one of the rare celebrities from the Soviet world to keep his influence intact in post-communist Russia.
In 1965 Pierre Cardin, Marc Bohan (then creative director of Dior) and Guy Laroche traveled to Moscow expressly to admire Zaitsev’s work; it was then that the French press compared him to Christian Dior and nicknamed him “the red Dior”. Zaitsev later designed the Russian team clothes for the 1980 Olympics and is also famous for dressing the last Soviet first lady, Raissa, wife of President Mikhail Gorbachev. Zaitsev was also the first Russian designer to walk the American catwalks: in 1992 he presented his collections for the first time in New York and Beverly Hills. In the 1990s, the designer was commissioned to design the robes of the judges of the Russian Constitutional Court and the uniforms of the Moscow police.
Born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Zaitsev on March 2, 1938 in Ivanovo, he graduated in 1856 from the Faculty of Applied Arts of the Ivanovo University of Chemistry and Technology, specializing in 1962 at the Moscow Textile Institute. He started working in the Mosoblsovnarkhoza factory as a supervisor of women’s clothing production. Zaitsev’s name came to prominence in the Soviet Union when in 1963 he designed a new, chicer version of the telogreika, a variety of Russian jacket padded with warm wool and cotton, which had originally been a part of the Red Army’s winter uniform During the Second World War. Followed by skirts inspired by the shawls made in Pavlovsky Posad and valenki (traditional Russian winter footwear) in a multicolored version, which caused a scandal.
Zaitsev was very successful but the communist regime did not allow him, at first, to expand his production beyond the USSR countries. In 1963 “Paris Match” was the first foreign magazine to describe Zaitsev’s fashion giving a very positive opinion. In 1965 Zaitsev was appointed creative director of the All-Union Fashion House, also known as Dom Modeli: he worked here until 1978, the year in which he decided to start his own business by opening his own atelier. In 1982 he officially founded Slava Zaitsev, his own fashion house: thus he became the first Soviet designer allowed by the government to label his clothes. By the mid-1980s he had 600 employees. In 1988, Gorbachev was in full swing, he debuted with a fashion show in Paris: he presented a collection entitled “Russian Seasons”, specially designed with fabrics purchased throughout Europe.
In addition to a fashion house, Slava Zaitsev also created a line of perfumes in the 1990s; he created Maroussia with L’OrĂ©al Paris, a perfume for women in a red bottle whose shape recalls the profile of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.
Slava Zaitsev has been joined over the years by his son Yegor, also a stylist, in running the maison. In 2001 Zaitsev kicked off lavish shows, featuring some of his most expensive dresses ever, ranging in price from $2-3,000 up to $10,000-12,000 apiece. In 2003 during Putin’s visit to England he designed the dress of first lady Lyudmila Putin. In 2005 he opened a chain of men’s clothing stores in some cities of Russia.
In 2019, his son Yegor Zaitsev took over the management of the fashion house.
#Designer #Slava #Zaitsev #Soviet #Christian #Dior #died