Fashion in Riga: May the fabric be its shadow

Riga – in my Soviet-influenced youth, that was far, far to the west. What we saw from the fashion there when we were sixteen or seventeen was the finest: items of clothing that we loved, cared for and enjoyed wearing. The magazine Riga Modes was a window to the west and not that far from Paris anymore. – And now, in 2024, I stand in Riga, at the invitation of the Baltic Fashion Federation, and see the diversity of Latvian fashion, amazing and close up like never before.

In Europe, Riga is now at the other end: in the east. This historical double perspective still gives Latvians something to think about even after thirty years. However, many do not see it as a burden, but rather as a potential, and locate themselves in the heart of Europe, whose sovereignty also begins in Eastern Europe. Where better to understand this than in fashion, which is so closely interwoven with people’s lives and, at the same time, the economy of a country?

Riga Fashion Week, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary at the end of October, is a rendezvous of Eastern European, Baltic and Western European fashion. Lookbooks and catalogs are all in Latvian, English and Russian; I speak Russian with most of the model people. There are no German labels on display, but the Italian embassy in Latvia organized and sponsored part of the event.

In addition to the shows, a lot of other things also take place. The Fashion Museum, whose director Natalja Muzičkina is a lady full of stories and deep knowledge of fashion, shows an exhibition of Vivienne Westwood’s collections from a private collection, a kind of crash course in Western punk culture. On the third evening there will be a discussion event at the Latvian Art Academy: “Fashion as Heritage”. The two discussants are remarkable personalities.

The Latvian designer Laima Jurča, who grew up partly in Soviet times, is bilingual, near the Russian border, learned in the West, was a finalist in the 2021 competition at the French Hyères Festival for young designers and a scholarship holder from the Paris embroidery manufacturer Maison Lesage. She wrote her doctoral thesis on sustainable mode with the programmatic title: “Fashion as a Gardening: Developing Fashion Design Processes Towards a Reparative Strategy of Care”. She recently returned to Latvia and is now teaching young designers at the Latvian Art Academy. She says her job is to teach young people how to invent their own, sustainable style. And you don’t need that much. Latvia itself has companies that recycle fabrics from old clothes.

A game of styles

Jurča’s discussion partner on the podium, fashion historian Matteo Augello, appears a little different: queer style, flowing hair like Michelangelo’s archangel – an ambassador from the world of diversity. Matteo, the native Italian who works at the London College for Fashion, approaches the styles in a playful way – this is Fashion Heritage live. He wore subtle make-up for the appearance: a statement against Latvia’s otherwise rigid LGBTQ policy, at a time when diversity is the big issue in the world’s fashion capitals.

The collections for the 2025 summer season will be presented for three days. Iveta Vecmane, for example, a Latvian label that has existed since 2017, is showing “X”, a collection from the “Melanholija” series. X doesn’t stand for Twitter, but rather for something unknown that changes depending on the equation. You can see young nuns or secret ninjas in long robes that emphasize the waist, without any accessories

. Crocheted inserts sit on the robes, like parts of fishing nets, removable as collars, or sewn like small napkins on the jacket and skirt as an all-over pattern. The models wear long, thin braids, like young women in the country used to. In conversation, the designer also thinks about hair: how much information everyone carries in their hair and how many stories there are in which women cut off their hair and thereby lose magical powers. Even if we want to change, we cut our hair. In the show, black paper confetti suddenly falls from above, and a woman rises from the ashes, newborn – after the end of the war.

The “sacred craft”

Or Lena Lumelsky, a favorite designer of fashion bloggers and high society divas. She was born in Crimea, studied in Tel Aviv and Antwerp, and was a finalist in the Mango Fashion Award. She currently lives and works in Belgium. For years she worked with craft businesses in Latvia, and when that became difficult, she decided in 2011 to have production done entirely in Latvia. Now, she tells me, they want to consciously produce in the post-Soviet space.

For a long time she sold at the Harvey Nichols design department store in London, the USA and Tokyo, but less so in Latvia itself. This is how the idea arose to found the Latvian label Artisaint, the “sacred craft” (a combination of words from the French Handyman and Saints). It aims to be a label for timeless and wearable fashion, alongside the Haute Couture line from Belgium, with reasonable prices to bring together artisans and creatives in Riga in one place. Production is based on new, more sustainable working methods. Until 2023 there was a seasonal collection twice a year, now we produce independently of this rhythm – get out of the crazy pace. According to Lumelsky, Eastern Europe is exactly the right place for this.

A double-layered dress with a neo-Gothic wedding train

Lumelsky’s outfits are fantastic and as imagined by René Magritte. Two long tops merge into one another at the bottom hems and form a single long fabric panel, an artificial tube: outfit for mermaids or neo-Gothic wedding train. One piece, she says, we put on and the piece on the other side is like its shadow. These are the fears that we drag behind us. But we must bring bodies and shadows together and transform our imperfection into dignity. The dress can also be worn in everyday life, it has several variations – the train for the evening, and during the day when both parts are worn on top of each other, it is a double-layered dress.

Where nature and tradition still go together

The collection from the Estonian label Carolxot is also fantastic: multi-layered, color-stained outfits made from leftover strips of fabric, knotted and crocheted together like a rag rug, with handmade prints that show water gradients. Above them, faces covered by sunglasses like the fish eyes of futuristic amphibious people.

However, the collection is not dedicated to Alexander Beljajev’s science fiction classic (“The Amphibian Man”, 1928), but to a formerly well-known institution: the largest fishing collective farm in Estonia, SM Kirov, founded in 1947 and named after a companion of Stalin. The gigantic industrial operation once dominated the entire Baltic Sea coast east of Tallin. The collection is a piece of resilience of coastal and island life, where nature and tradition still go hand in hand.

In contrast, the collection of the Spanish-Latvian label with the beautiful name Novalis pays homage to the night, as Novalis sang about it in his hymns, the ritual. White wedding dresses appear, with long ribbons and lots of fabric, they combine classic Madonna cult and Nordic legends: necromancy dances, Baltic goddesses and gods. They love fashion from Riga.

Transparency note: The Baltic Fashion Federation supported the research.