Russian fashion designer Slava Zaitsev, known as ‘Red Dior’, dies aged 85

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Artist died on Sunday (30), after a ‘prolonged illness’, according to the AFP news agency. Zaitsev was known for patterning dresses similar to traditional Russian shawls. Vyacheslav ‘Slava’ Zaitsev, in 2018, after a show at Moscow Fashion Week Pavel Golovkin/via AP Russian designer Viacheslav “Slava” Zaitsev, dubbed by the French press the “Red Dior” and the “Soviet Fashion Tsar” , died on Sunday (30) at the age of 85, after a prolonged illness, his fashion house informed AFP. Karl Lagerfeld Why tribute to the designer was a controversial topic at the Met Gala 2023 Met Gala 2023 See the looks of the guests Zaitsev, who created more than a thousand models during his career, was known for the prints of his dresses, similar to the traditional colorful shawls of his country. “I can do a whole show in Red Square with my dresses,” said Zaitsev during an interview with AFP in 2017. In early March, when the designer “gathered his friends on the occasion of his birthday, he already looked very weak”, he told AFP spokeswoman for his fashion house in Moscow, Kira Burenina, who confirmed the information about the death released by the Russian press. Vyacheslav ‘Slava’ Zaitsev with models at the 2022 Moscow Fashion Week show Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters/Archive “The stylist Viacheslav Zaitsev passed away. This year he celebrated his 85th birthday,” reported Russian public TV Pervy Kanal, rendering homage to someone who “dictated Soviet and Russian fashion for decades, an innovator who was not afraid of daring experiments”. “It’s a great loss for the world of fashion,” said Russian designer Sergey Zverev, quoted by public agency Ria Novisti, as he lamented the death of the man he called a “legend”. According to his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, of which he was a member, the designer, also known as “Slava” (short for Viacheslav), died after a prolonged illness. In 1963, the French magazine Paris Match dubbed him the Soviet “Christian Dior”. Twenty-five years later, in 1988, Vogue magazine referred to him as the “Soviet Fashion Tsar”. Trajectory Zaitsev was born on March 2, 1938, into a modest, working-class family in the city of Ivanovo, with a population of 400,000 northeast of Moscow. She studied at a technical school specializing in chemistry and then entered the Textile Institute in Moscow, which was in charge of training technicians in textile factories. The most renowned universities closed their doors to her because her father, captured by the Germans during World War II, was considered by the Stalinist regime at the end of the conflict a traitor and sentenced to ten years in a forced labor camp. Slava Zaitsev’s fashion show at Moscow Fashion Week in June 2022 Associated Press “When I was a child, my mother taught me to embroider so I wouldn’t walk the streets aimlessly. At night, I would pick flowers with some friends on Lenin Avenue to draw them. them and reproduce these designs in embroidery. That’s how I got started in art,” the stylist told AFP. Zaitsev got his first international recognition in 1963, when the French magazine “Paris Match” wrote about his collection of overalls for workers, according to a note published on his website. The collection’s bright, flowery jackets and skirts were rejected by the Experimental Clothing Factory for which Zaitsev worked, the RIA news agency reported. In 1965, he began work as artistic director of the experimental All-Union House of Fashion Models in Moscow, and some of his designs, which often implemented traditional Russian flower patterns, were exhibited in the West. Four years later, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a show of women’s dresses based on sketches by Zaitsev, among others. After the performance, Zaitsev received offers to open stores in the West, which the Soviet authorities denied. In 1979, Zaitsev left the All-Union House of Models for a small atelier, which in 1982 he transformed into the Slava Zaitsev Moscow Fashion House, becoming the first Soviet fashion designer allowed to label his clothes. Among Zaitsev’s Russian clients were music stars, actors, socialites and politicians.

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