Gosha Rubchinskiy felt nostalgic for the year 1984, which provided ample fodder for his retro spring effort. To the remixed sounds of Eighties techno music, the designer sent out a bunch of teenagers he’d hired off the streets of Russia, mixing elements from the period with contemporary athletic clothing.
Parading in a rundown basketball court built by the YMCA in the late 19th century, they resembled an Olympic team competing for the Soviet Union, with hammer and sickle adorning their street-smart uniforms comprised of nylon blousons, cropped seersucker tank tops and matching retro shorts.
Rubchinskiy looked to the constructivist graphics of Alexander Rodchenko to add color to his predominantly white-blue-red themed palette, conjuring mesh tank tops made of multi-colored panels and knitted sweaters that harked back at those styles made famous by Bill Cosby in his TV comedy show, which also premiered in 1984. He matched those with denim sweatpants featuring elastic hems or wildly printed linen bottoms for a deliberately tacky, yet irresistible look.
The decisively youthful collection would probably look silly on a grown man, but had plenty of street-cred, reflecting today’s youth movement in Russia.