Anton Belinskiy (Q2687)

One Day ProjectAnton Belinskiy is one of the brightest talents in Kiev. This is the former LVMH Prize finalist’s second year heading up One Day Project, a mini Fashion Week that is dedicated to showcasing a handful of young designers in Ukraine. Belinskiy successfully presented his collection in Paris last season and is slated to show there again in a few weeks, but he has a soft spot for Ukraine and presented his Spring show here, too. One of the attractions of Belinskiy and his work is that his love for his country is genuine: He can take all of his nation’s kitschy post-Soviet offerings and make them entertaining, beautiful even. For example, the show’s setting this season, the second floor of the local bazaar Zhitniy Rinok, which was filled with stalls selling monstrous cow legs and slabs of pig fat. It also smelled overwhelmingly like fish.That said, this show had its idiosyncrasies. It started more than an hour late. The hairstylist refused to work due to a messy dressing room. Meanwhile, as guests were waiting, a random dog licked itself in the middle of the runway. The situation was symbolic of the particularly slow and bizarre workings of Ukraine. Funny enough, the collection was based on the country’s politics, something else that is riddled with perpetual standstills, typically due to corruption. To emphasize this, Belinskiy used Hawaii as a jumping-off point, referring to it as a “favorite, vulgar” vacation for politicians. Among the catchy floral aloha-print pants and shirts, tongue-in-cheek standouts included a bikini cut from the fur of a hat worn by cabinet members and a mahogany brown puffer coat that mimicked the leather couches in the Ukrainian parliament.Despite his critique of Ukrainian politics, Belinskiy didn’t forget his homegrown pride. If you looked close enough, you could see that those Hawaiian shirts were dotted with pretty marigolds, a beloved flower in Ukraine. Elsewhere, a yellow and blue Ukrainian flag was cleverly inserted into a striped polo.