Rihanna wears an Ulyana Sergeenko piece in her NSFW video "Bitch Better Have My Money." Emilia Clarke chose one of Sergeenko's red-carpet numbers for the Seoul leg of the Terminator Genisys tour. That's a good week by any designer's standards. Sergeenko has come pretty far since her first couture show three Julys ago. The Chambre Syndicale made her an official guest member earlier this year.
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Her new Fall collection, like all of them so far, tells a story about her native Russia. This one focused on Saint Petersburg's Soviet-era communal apartments, which saw once-grand 10-room homes divided among their once-grand mistresses and any number of sailors, peasant families, KGB officers, and army men. Interiors were the starting point, but with the exception of a few pieces—a fur coat tufted like a sofa, a fully embroidered dress with a lampshade hem, a bulky off-the-shoulder knit dress—much of the collection exhibited a new lightness. The strength of Sergeenko's brand is its precious, delicate handwork for which she employs many homegrown artisans. It was put to lovely use on a dress tatted from two different colored yarns and layered over a pale lavender slip, and again on a black velvet dress with a lace bib featuring a squirrel lifted from drinking glasses that Sergeenko and her right-hand man, Frol Burimskiy, remember from their childhoods.
As sweet as that sounds, and aside from the occasional fur bonnets, it wasn't entirely innocent. It never is here. The apartment theme gave Sergeenko a reason to explore boudoir-ish pieces. A black silk dress wrapped closed like a peignoir and a floral jacquard pajama set came trimmed with a fur collar. Bad gal RiRi can wear the velvet fil coupe robe in her next video.
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