Fashion Spaces in Practice: Gosha Rubchinskiy F/W2017

pages 40-49, in fashion spaces. a THEORETICAL view

It is possible for a designer’s creativity and a brand’s strategy – along with wider economic and social trends – to influence all four components of a fashion space: location, place, site and metaspace. To take one example, Russian fashion designer Gosha Rubchinskiy presented his Fall/Winter 2017 collection
in a specific location on the south bank of the Pregolya River in Kaliningrad: the old Stock Exchange, built in the 19th century when the city was part of Prussia and known as Königsberg. The building was partially destroyed during the Second World War, and the city was then annexed by the Soviet Union. Afterwards, the shell of the Stock Exchange was used as a backdrop for war films, before being restored in the 1960s to become a maritime centre and a regional centre for youth culture. It has recently been refurbished to house the city’s Museum of Fine Arts. As a result, it has rich and diverse meanings as a place. Given the complex and contentious histories of both Kaliningrad and the Stock Exchange, this was not a traditional location or place for
a fashion brand. Rubchinskiy’s decision to utilise this context
in the creation of a site, offering a football-inspired spin on post-Soviet chic, reflected his strategy for creating a metaspace that engages the collection’s target audience – youths who do not consider themselves part of the establishment. This choice of location, place, site and metaspace exemplifies the prevailing trend of importing street fashion into the luxury-fashion sector.