Ulyana Sergeyenko's 1920s-style menswear line echoes Stepanova and Popova

Ulyana Sergeyenko has for the first time presented a full menswear line as well. The declared style of the 1920s is genuinely maintained, and one can make out allusions to the period in the work of Varvara Stepanova, Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova, grouped around the journal "LEF", when they withdrew from the Constructivist manifesto's insistence on strict correspondence between function and appearance, and on the dictatorship of prozodezhda (production clothing), towards the decorativeness of "normal clothing" and, in effect, the revival of fashion. In the end, in 1929, Popova admitted that fashion "is not an unnecessary appendage of a speculative character". And in the event the greatest influence was left precisely by those works of Stepanova and Popova that ran counter to the programme of Constructivism and were connected with the decorative dress of printed fabrics. On the whole, since this collection of Ulyana's contains a great many sporting references, one can also make out traits of the work of Nadezhda Lamanova and Alexandra Exter, who were in fact engaged in sportswear. It is an aesthetic that is rather sorely missed on today's catwalks, against the background of frankly trashy, rubbishy clothing.