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A passion for fashion
She’s the presenter of Ukraine’s X-factor, currently appearing on her country’s version of Strictly, and the wife of a close associate of Putin – but first and foremost, Oksana Marchenko is Dolce & Gabbana’s number one fan. Bethan Holt meets her
A Dolce & Gabbana adventure on Lake Como with Ukrainian TV presenter Oksana Marchenko. By Bethan Holt
You may think that it’s impossible to be overdressed at a Dolce & Gabbana event. But if one woman has ever tested that proposition to its limits then it is Oksana Marchenko, who arrives at the label’s Alta Moda show on the shores of Lake Como wearing a scarlet-feathered gown with shoulders that plume a foot wider than her body, and a train cascading down six steps. For good measure, the look is finished with a hefty crucifix of diamonds and a ruby gobstopper of a ring.
Like all of the high-spending customers whom Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana invite to their four-day-long couture shopping extravaganzas every summer, Marchenko is accompanied by her own personal attendant, a handsome white-suited young man ready to cater to her every whim. As she poses for photos, she looks so at home that it’s difficult to believe this is her first Alta Moda jaunt.
‘My schedule has simply never allowed for it before, although I did go to a runway show about three years ago,’ Marchenko tells me via her friend who acts as a translator earlier in the day, when I find her sipping champagne in the rooftop bar of her hotel. At this point, she’s in a relatively understated look: a lilac tulle shift dress with a row of crystal hearts beaded across the neckline, coppery hair falling in perfect ringlets around her décolletage.
Oksana Marchenko is Ukraine’s one-woman combination of Amanda Holden and Melania Trump. She is one of the country’s best-known TV presenters, having fronted Ukraine’s Got Talent and X-factor. She is also the third wife of Viktor Medvedchuk, a lawyer, businessman and politician who is perhaps best described as Putin’s man in Ukraine. Indeed, when international sanctions were issued against those implicated in the 2014 sovereignty crisis, he was one of the first to be blacklisted by the US, Canada, Switzerland and Australia.
It was through her TV work that Marchenko got to know Dolce and Gabbana 16 years ago, when she commissioned her first costume from the duo. ‘It was a very novel dress because back in those days, Dolce & Gabbana were the only ones putting crystals on dresses so it felt like something new. I felt like a diamond. Nobody could keep their eyes off the dress,’ she remembers. ‘Now my taste has calmed down a little bit.’ I puzzle over this when I see her red look that evening.
In Ukraine, Marchenko’s style is a subject of national fascination. In 2011, she was voted the most beautiful woman in Ukraine by Viva!, the country’s answer to Hello!. How many Dolce dresses does she own? ‘I couldn’t tell you, I’ve never counted them,’ she says, lowering her eyes and tucking a ringlet behind her ear. She suggests that I look at her website to see some examples. Amid albums full of pictures of her visiting orphanages, I find a comprehensive breakdown of some of her TV looks. In a pale-pink beaded dress for an X-factor final, Marchenko is described as ‘a fairy-tale fairy… and looking at her, one wants to believe that all dreams will come true.’
Marchenko, who is 45, is at pains to point out that she doesn’t actually keep all of her outfits. Plenty are stored in her various wardrobes, but often she prefers to give them away. ‘There is this TV show in Ukraine where contestants compete to lose weight. One of the women loved a dress I had, so I went on the show and told her that if she lost the weight, I would give it to her. Five or six weeks later, she wasn’t quite as slim as me, but we altered it and I gave it to her.’
While their opulent aesthetic attracted her to Dolce and Gabbana initially, Marchenko – a devout Christian –puts the longevity and depth of the friendship that she has developed with the designers down to their shared sense of spirituality. ‘My passion for Dolce & Gabbana comes because they are close to the church. So many of their pieces relate to the world of Christianity [the designers have made the glamorous Catholic aesthetic their own, with jewelled rosaries, mantilla-esque black lace and cherub motifs among their signatures]. I was also so pleased when I saw Domenico’s bracelet, which has icons of all the saints on it.’ They have bonded over discussions about the Turin shroud, and she has organised tours of Kiev’s monasteries for the designers.
Fashion never registered on Marchenko’s radar as a child – she is the middle of three siblings from a ‘humble’ family. She studied medicine and then history – both are still obsessions. She tells me that she is always on hand to provide medical assistance on set, especially when she’s filming at remote locations far from a hospital, and will happily administer injections for her family and friends.
Fittingly, given that she is now famous for hosting shows that promise to make the dreams of others come true, Marchenko became a TV presenter after being encouraged to audition by the children she was caring for at a summer camp. ‘It was very unexpected – it came out of nowhere,’ she says. ‘We heard that there were auditions happening for TV shows. I was working with kids who were blind: they told me to go for it. They actually helped me to see the world. If I hadn’t been successful, I’d have followed my original plan to be a history professor.’
Marchenko does wear other labels aside from Dolce & Gabbana, though she will only name Ulyana Sergeenko, the Russian designer known for ladylike designs that incorporate nods to Slavic history and folklore, and who is also the ex-wife of insurance billionaire Danil Khachaturov. But Dolce adoration is a family affair. Domenico has hand-illustrated a pair of train-
‘Putin is an amazing godfather. He’s a very profound person’
ers for her 14-year-old daughter Daryna (although Marchenko is otherwise keen to keep her away from fashion for the moment), and her 21-year-old son Bogdan, from her first marriage to businessman Yuriy Korzh, also loves to wear the label for special occasions. Marchenko is effusive about the special relationship that the designers create with clients like her. She will visit them in Milan or they come to Kiev, depending on the commission. ‘They don’t have to do this for us, but they treat us like relatives.’
Her husband is such a Dolce & Gabbana devotee, she confides, that he wears it exclusively. Everything he has, from underwear to tailoring, is embroidered with his initials. He even uses the Italian house’s fragrances. For their most recent wedding anniversary, Dolce and Gabbana created a T-shirt for her to give to Medvedchuk, bearing a picture of her wearing one of their designs. It’s impossible to quantify exactly, but the Medvedchuk-marchenkos must have spent millions on Dolce & Gabbana over the years.
The couple married in 2003. Marchenko paints a picture of super-rich marital bliss. ‘We have the largest library in Ukraine, with over 5,000 books – it is our shared love,’ she says. After the Dolce & Gabbana shows, she is going on to meet her husband – and their boat – in Venice. ‘We’ve been together for 20 years, but these romantic moments are so important to us. We’ll listen to music on gondolas and go for nice dinners. I wish everyone could have this kind of love.’
Medvedchuk got to know Putin when he was working as chief of staff for former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, during the 2000s. Putin has holidayed with the family and is godfather to Daryna. ‘We had the ceremony in St Petersburg, at the same church where Putin himself was christened. He’s an amazing godfather. They spend a lot of time together, especially focusing on religion. He’s a very profound person.’ Svetlana Medvedeva, wife of Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, is Daryna’s godmother.
As chairman of pro-russia organisation Ukrainian Choice, Medvedchuk’s interests have inevitably come under scrutiny. ‘I hold that we are two peoples, but friendly and brotherly peoples,’ he told the Financial Times in 2017. This summer, he announced that he plans to return to politics as part of the For Life party, which supports closer ties with Russia rather than Europe. He is also reportedly behind the management of Ukrainian TV channel 112, where positive mentions of his name and political views have increased significantly in recent months.
After my meeting with Marchenko, it emerges that she owns 50.1 per cent of a Cyprus-based offshore company called NZNP Trade LLC, which has won the contract to drill in the Gavrikovsky oilfield in the Khanty-mansi region of Russia. It’s a position that will give her access to an estimated 123.7 million tons of oil.
Whatever the power couple’s future plans, there is a First Lady feel to her public image. She has developed a reputation as something of a lifestyle guru, posting advice on her social media about healthy living – she advocates cooking with ‘food of the gods’ amaranth powder, substituting sugar with agaragar and starting the day with a 5k run followed by skipping and Pilates. At the moment, she is taking part in Ukraine’s version of Strictly Come Dancing – all costumes created by Dolce & Gabbana, naturally. She also has plans for her own TV show offering life advice to women, acknowledging that life in Ukraine can be ‘tough’ for many.
‘The best thing for a healthy life is to be in love with someone,’ she counsels. ‘You look well if you are happy and in love. If someone is in love with you, you see the beauty in the world and appreciate everything.’ Presumably, a steady supply of couture helps too.
How many Dolce dresses does she own? ‘I couldn’t tell you, I’ve never counted them’