From the archives: Leonid Alexeev

On 18 May 2010 in the frames of Aurora Fashion Week in Bookvoed book-club there was a meeting with designer Leonid Alexeev. We have selected the main quotes from that meeting.

The importance of the presentation:
"Besides having sewn this long-awaited piece of clothes, you must present it competently. Your portfolio, your photos have to reflect the idea of your whole process , as your clothes do [...] At school, where I teach, we teach
first and foremost to complete your idea, bring it to people's notice in a presentation form so that it will be clear [...] because people who look at the designer's work, at these images of yours, they don't understand a thing about it. It's impossible to explain to them that these lines are important. That's why you have to get an image which like a magazine's page tells more".

Tendencies:
"The trend of 00's decade - the influence of youth culture. Youth and sport is in fashion now. [...] The influence of sports casual on fashion (yoga clothes, zouaves) was dictated by sports clothes, comfort and ease. At the moment we're passing to the next decade, but let's talk about it in 10 years".

The clothes that you produce must have a commercial success, they have to be sold, they must have a purpose

Haute Couture:
"Haute Couture is the clothes presented by the designer in order to show what he can make, to show his craftsmanship. These clothes are always very creative, very difficult to sew. Nobody buys haute couture pieces. It is impossible to come to the showroom and say: "I want this dress". They will sew another one for you, the same but fitted specially for you".

Textiles:
"All the biggest, even medium companies, like ours, we order textiles at the exhibitions. We have dealers, who come to our office, bring textile's collections. We look at the collection and make the palette or an idea of what we would like to show to you in a show in six months. That means we have only 6 months to order all the materials. How to do it? It is possible to use your own intuition. But if you work for a big company and you want to be sure, or you are a very responsible person and you want to hit the right trends you ask help from special companies - fashion-prediction companies . They publish lookbooks with selections of textiles which will be interesting and actual next season. If you don't have enough money to get access to these lookbooks, these companies can offer you a beta-version.

Some curious publications:
"International Textiles"
"Knitting international"
"Experimental Textiles"
"Hot Textile"

It's impossible to make a shop from confetti, the shop should be formed with clothes that anyone will wear every day. But if you forget about bright and unusual designer clothes, your collection won't be interesting

Runway collections
"The main thing on the runway is good-looking photos. The runway collection works for the company's image and doesn't work for sales because it's too difficult to sell those clothes - they are a bit exaggerated, complicated... the concept brought to its limit. There are also capsule collections where one can find basic things which are always needed and don't change from season to season (bestsellers). Every designer has created some pieces that are successful commercially, nobody throws them away after the season - they are just no longer shown on the runway but they are repeated in different colours or materials. The most difficult thing in design is to create pieces which will be successful in a commercial way.


The turnover of a small fashion-house is 11 mln rubles now. So, if you want to start your own business you will need 100% of this sum.

"A strong financial base is needed. Brands which were created with investor's money (Alena Akhmadullina, DENIS SIMACHEV) are not effective at the moment. Sponsor's money are over and it turns out that such brands can't survive without millions of dollars of new investment. Now everything changes, the management changes. Some companies that were producing cheap jackets and coats started to make attention to fashion trends, they want to be not only cheap but they want designers. I think that in Russia a young desigher should work for a commercial company in the beginning of his career and try not to loose his creativity. He has to understand how the business works.


D & P