Zlatoust fashion

Not-real fashion shooting for showing one small town and thirst for beauty.

These photos represent the clothing collection of designer Semyon Dedyaev, citizen of Zlatoust, small Ural town.

Decay and poverty of Zlatoust, the typical problem of any Russian mining town, is compensated by greatness of the nature and pride of former merits. This very place witnessed, how the artist-armorer Ivan Bushuyev surpassed in skills his German teachers and created the Russian school of an engraving on steel in the 19th century. He immortalized battle scenes with participation of simple Russian soldiers, on blades. The decorative weapon is the calling card of Zlatoust. Town has got two plants – metallurgical and machine-building.

Machine-building plant was once the manufacturer of Maxim’s machine guns, Tokarev’s rifles, machine guns of Kalashnikovs, ballistic missiles for navy. During the tough 90-s, due to state funding cut-off, the plant produced “Dream” electric hot plates, which are used in every Zlatoust house.

Semyon suggested me to shoot his clothing collection, and I decided to tell about the town the particular way.

You couldn’t call it the real fashion shooting, of course. Everything, that could prevent creating a serious fashion project, became part of the concept: shoes, forgotten by models, casual people, who had to react somehow to our actions, the live emotions of young women, caused by an oddness of the situation. Zlatoust pattern conflicted with our behavior, girls, appearing as models, turned into an alien, defiant element. A gap occurred right in between what we did and the reality was. It’s especially interesting to consider the town and pursuit to beauty, which is out of interest and shown in freakish forms, from that point of view.