Famous Russian fashion designer Vyacheslav “Slava” Zaitsevwhich was called out by the western press “Red Dior” and “Soviet Czar of Fashion”passed away this Sunday at the age of 85 after a long illnesshis fashion house told AFP.

Couturier, who created over a thousand models during his careerit became known for the pattern of their dresses, similar to that of the colorful traditional scarves of their country. “I can dress the whole parade on Red Square in my dresses,” Zaitsev told AFP in 2017 during an interview.

At the beginning of March, when the designer “gathered his friends for his birthday, he already looked very, very weak,” the spokeswoman for his fashion house in Moscow, Kira Burenina, told AFP, confirming the death. Russian media.

“Designer Viacheslav Zaitsev has passed away. This year he celebrated his 85th birthday,” reported Russian public service Pervyj Kanal, paying tribute to the one who “dictated Soviet and Russian fashion for decades, an innovator who was not afraid of bold experiments.”

“It’s a great loss for the fashion world.“, said the Russian stylist Serguei Zverev, who was quoted by the public agency Ria Novisti, lamenting the death of the “legend”. According to his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, of which he was a member, the designer, who became known as “Slava” (short for his name, Vyacheslav), died after a long illness.

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“Fashion Emperor”

In 1963, the French magazine Paris Match called him the Soviet “Christian Dior”. A quarter of a century later, in 1988. Vogue magazine called him the “Soviet Czar of Fashion”.

Born on March 2, 1938 in Ivanovo, a city of 400,000 inhabitants northeast of Moscow, Zaitsev grew up in a modest family. His mother was a housewife. He studied at the secondary technical school of chemistry, and then entered the Moscow Textile Institute, which was in charge of training technicians for weaving factories.

The most prestigious universities in the capital have closed their doors because his father, captured by the Germans during World War II, was considered a traitor by the Stalinist regime at the end of the conflict and sentenced him to ten years in a forced labor camp.

“When I was a child, my mother taught me embroidery so that I don’t wander aimlessly through the streets. At night, some friends and I collected flowers on Lenina Avenue in order to draw it and reproduce those drawings in embroidery. That’s how I started doing art,” the designer told AFP.

In 1962, the Soviet authorities banned her first collection of workwear for female workers, which consisted of skirts inspired by the floral patterns of traditional Russian shawls and colorful, plush boots. They did this by using “too bright” colors that contrasted with the “gray Soviet everyday life, where no one had to distinguish themselves from others.” according to Zaitsev.

Nevertheless, the collection attracted the attention of the Western media. In 1963, Paris Match became the first Western magazine to present Zaitsev as a pioneer of Soviet fashion. Watched by the KGB because of his contacts with Western designers and his extravagant character, Zaitsev was not allowed to leave the country, so his first collections traveled abroad without him.

Between 2007 and 2009, the designer hosted the popular television show “The Fashion Verdict” in which a group of stylists dressed housewives in the latest fashion. For him, true happiness was “working with people every day,” creating models for clients, not catwalks, the designer told AFP in 2017.