Looking at a collection by Svitlana Bevza is like that first breath of fresh air the morning after a rainstorm, a fitting reference for this season’s offering titled “Dew in the Sun.” And while Bevza was most certainly thinking about dew, she was also thinking about her home country of Ukraine. “The dew drops in the morning look beautiful, but the title of this collection is also a phrase from our national anthem,” she explained. “It’s a very encouraging message [“our enemies shall vanish, like dew in the sun”], and we wanted to take that and conceptualize it into the pieces in the collection.”
The Bevza we are very familiar with tends to stick to a more neutral color palette with little to no embellishments, but this season she added some subtle hints of sparkle and shine. A dewdrop-shaped strapless black taffeta gown was adorned with tiny crystal teardrops that, from afar, bore a resemblance to the drizzle left on leaves. A Bevza collection isn’t complete without a reference to wheat (a vital crop of Ukraine): gold, wheat-shaped ornaments accessorized the collection in the form of belt buckles, necklaces, and tie pins. Her signature black corset was ornamented with the motif alternating from shimmering gold to a murkier black, which Bevza emphasizes was to showcase the history of Ukraine. “The intention with the mixed metal was to refer back to 2022. The bombs destroyed the fields of wheat, and that’s how the burned spikes looked,” she solemnly said.
This season, the designer skipped a runway show for her twice-a-year showings in New York. Storytelling is always a big part of the designer’s process; this season, she also wanted the public to experience it themselves. “I try to find optimistic notes in what I’m doing. And Bevza’s storytelling keeps me in perfect shape, even in dark times,” said the designer. Starting tomorrow, regardless of whether you work in fashion, you’ll be able to visit the Ukrainian Institute of America to take a look and enter into this chapter of Bevza’s life.