PARIS: Tripolar

Meet Tripolar: Venya Brykalin, Sonya Kvasha and Anna October. Venya Brykalin is the fashion director of Vogue Ukraine. He now lives in Paris, where he has been one of the main voices drawing attention to the creative scene in Ukraine since the outbreak of war in February 2022. Together with Sonya Kvasha (founder of baby_productions) and a number of other Ukrainian creatives, he co-founded Tripolar, a pop-up series held in Paris to promote contemporary Ukrainian culture and design. Anna October founded her eponymous fashion label in 2010 which has grown to become one of the most interesting, sensual and successful brands of the past year. The friends got together for SLEEK to talk.

Tripolar, the eponymous project’s pop-up shop, bears witness to the tremendous creative power of a Paris-based collaboration between friends, all from Ukraine. This first chapter of an unconventional, personal concept with its special curatorial team of Ukrainian designers and artists combining traditional, folkloric crafts with modern production methods can be seen as an example of what the network aims to achieve in the future. Today, Venya Brykalin, Sonya Kvasha and Anna October are living in Paris, where they have become significant voices since the outbreak of the war in February 2022, not only drawing attention to Ukraine’s creative scene but above all making an impression through their work.

SLEEK: How did Tripolar come about?

Venya: At Paris Fashion Week last spring, I happened to meet a jewellery designer. She had found out that I’m from Ukraine and offered there and then to let me use a space for a small pop-up. That, you might say, was the birth of the idea of Tripolar. During the first month of the war, production as a whole in Ukraine was put on ice, and suddenly designers didn’t have access to their showrooms any more. No one had any money or any idea what would happen next. So we combined all our contacts and got support and help from all over.

Sonya: Oh yes, it all happened so fast. We didn’t give much thought to a concept, but we wanted to create something that interests us about our own culture. It was only during preparations that we realised how varied and multifaceted the cultural landscape of our homeland is. And that’s exactly what we wanted to represent, bridging the gap between past, present and future. We just felt we could only create an image of where we came from if it was very personal. I don’t think you can plan something like that, it just happens.

Venya Absolutely. We put our heads together and gathered up what we like and what we then wanted to share with other people. The whole thing was really a very subjective perspective on how we perceive our reality and background. From this experience and the feedback we received, we realised that it is precisely this type of platform that will be important in future if we want to show how strong, exciting and multifaceted our work is. We don’t want people to take notice of us just because we’re a Ukrainian project. We want people to come because word has got around about how cool, interesting and great a presentation or a format is. Of course, the focus should always be on an exciting idea, a fantastic project, a talented designer or artist, and if people are then surprised that it or they are from Ukraine, that’s the right way round. If you want to present something and celebrate it as Ukrainian, then it should be the best that Ukraine produces and the work of the most exciting and talented artists. And this is exactly the approach we’re pursuing with Tripolar.

SLEEK: So for you it’s about making it on equal terms.

Venya: Of course. What we’re doing right now is raising our voices in a creative way in order to attract attention. A lot of the people we deal with who are from Ukraine just want to keep working and have the opportunity to prove themselves. Over the last year we’ve also realised that we don’t want to be associated with where we come from alone. Let’s just do what we do best. Let’s create spaces and let’s work together to make the creative potential visible.

Sonya: We want to show and be judged on what we have inside us. It all depends on how exciting an idea, project or format is, and whether it shakes up and enhances the scene. In my opinion, the important thing now is to involve our potential in a natural and long-term way and to be curious about what we have to say. I’ve learned to offer invitations and use the available channels to say “look what we’re doing”. I want my work and my background to create interest and make us learn from each other because it enriches us. To do this we need ideas that make it clear that we are creative people whose point of view, experiences and influences make them an asset. When I fall in love with a wonderful design, it’s certainly not because it comes from a particular place – it’s because it triggers something in me.

Anna: My work as a designer happens between Paris and Kyiv. The whole team is in Kyiv and everything is created there. Whatever the global situation is, we’re carrying on working, and for our work we need visibility. Every opportunity that comes up for us is also a way of supporting our country. My answer may sound rather pragmatic, but the key is to keep at it and not forget someone who is really good at their job and talented. I really appreciate the visibility and all the interviews we got at the start, but if people associate the name of my label with a tragedy, it’s unhelpful and doesn’t do us justice. Every day people like me work behind the scenes to support our country and lead it to victory, but our best advertisement is the work we offer the world – the war is not the message.

Venya: It doesn’t matter how many hours sleep we get, where our families are and how we make ends meet. That’s a personal issue, and it doesn’t make our work any less good or bad. We want to draw attention to our work and our potential because our talent, our independence and our voice get us noticed. If we can achieve this – and it’s the reason we’re invited to collaborate and make presentations – then we’ve achieved our goal too. At the end of the day, it’s important to look at the whole picture and understand what needs to be done now and what our homeland means as well. We’re proud of who we are and we’re proud of our country, our nation, our history and our origins. And we’re proud to show all this through our work, our skills and our passions in the places where we’re living now.

Anna: My work itself is also a kind of communication because through the details of a design or an inspiration I’m telling a story. So I’ll tell you a bit about my background, but that’s all. It’s important to me that people choose my clothes because they make their lives more beautiful – then I’ve done my job well. I arrived in Paris a year ago. Before February 2022 I already had a project to go to Paris, but had made no firm plans. And then it happened. It feels natural for me to be pulling the threads together from here, alongside my friends.

Venya: Who doesn’t love Paris? And apart from that, it just makes sense for me to be here where I can make a contribution. I vividly remember an encounter at the very beginning. In the first few weeks of the war, all over Paris there were centres run by volunteers offering humanitarian aid. I met someone on the street at one of these centres, and they said something like, “I think I’ve got some old bits of furniture that I don’t need any more. I’ll send them to Ukraine to support them.” And my answer was: “But how is that supposed to help?” I haven’t forgotten that, because for me it is an example of how Ukraine is perceived globally as a country, and how little the West knew about us. This war is the first one that we can follow continuously, simultaneously and everywhere on social media. Images and reports create so many clichés about the war, about wars in general, about refugees in general, and about people who have to go through these wars. I was shocked at the degree of ignorance about my country. As a global community, for the first time in Europe we’re witnessing an attack on a modern country whose standard of living is similar to that of other European countries. I think it’s really about understanding what Ukraine is. We have great music, great designers, great artists, great photographers, and a history that, if you study it, can teach you a lot. We all had plans, dreams, lives, and we were happy with that. Many of us were building international careers. We had our jobs, and I think if you just compare that to yourself, your own life in a safe place, maybe you can understand that we want to get involved in the place where we live now.

Sonya: For me it’s also about creating an institution in an international location that focuses on contemporary Ukrainian art and culture. It’s about making spaces for education and mediation, because only then will doors and the future open up.

As featured in SLEEK 76 FREEDOM. Available in print and digital here.