I was preparing for fashion week – now I’m a war refugee
Leading Ukrainian designer Lilia Litkovskaya tells Lisa Armstrong how the Russian invasion tore her life apart
Last Wednesday, Lilia Litkovskaya was still planning her trip to Paris where she was due to show her collection during the biggest and most prestigious Fashion Week of them all.
At 6am on Thursday morning, however, with the sound of explosions echoing around the picturesque old quarter of Kyiv where she lives with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Radomyra, the designer and her ex-partner Nikita, a photographer, made the decision to head to Poland. Nikita would have to drop them at the border, as Ukrainian males aged under 60 have been banned from leaving.
They bundled a suitcase and as much cash as they could muster (their bank cards no longer work abroad) into their Land Rover and strapped Radomyra into her car seat. The 10-hour journey took them 12 hours, thanks to a nine-hour delay at the border. They passed processions of Ukrainian tanks and tried their luck at petrol stations with lengthening queues and diminishing supplies. So far it’s estimated that 120,000 Ukrainians have fled their homeland. Litkovskaya tells me that she experienced several panic attacks and saw many mothers with tiny children unable to cross the border. They tried to take one woman and her son with them but the woman was turned back because she didn’t have the correct documentation.
Litkovskaya is one of the lucky ones. As a designer who sells to more than 15 countries, she was used to travelling, especially before the pandemic. She’s one of Ukraine’s most prominent fashion names, having dressed Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, including for her appearances, irony of ironies, at Ukraine’s independence anniversary celebrations last August. Recently she has been working on a collection for Selfridges.
She’s talking to me over FaceTime on Friday evening from a clean, modern-looking hotel in Krakow, which she booked online during the long drive – this is a very European kind of exile. She’s wearing a simple black hoodie, her delicate features etched with stress, despair – often close to tears – but also, at times, exhilaration.
Perhaps it’s the adrenaline. She’s with both her daughter and Nikita, because, against the odds, the guards waved him through at the border.
It’s only when he appears with Radomyra halfway through our interview, that her face breaks into a huge smile. She looks exhausted.
Her mother, to whom she speaks several times a day (her father died in the 1990s) is still at home in the suburbs of Kyiv. “I begged her to come but she wouldn’t leave her dog.” She pauses for a few moments. “She’s with some of our family. When I spoke to her an hour ago they were all sheltering in the basement.”
“Surreal” is the only word to describe her situation, she explains. Kyiv was such a buzzy city, with its hipster cafés and galleries that Litkovskaya and her friends never imagined it would be invaded, even though they’ve known for months that Russian troops were gathering on the border. “I’m not a political person,” she says. Last week she was still taking Radomyra to nursery and putting the finishing touches to her new collection. “Of course we all watched the footage of Syrian and Afghani refugees, but we all thought “this just can’t happen in this city of ours that’s always written up in travel articles as the new Berlin”.
The sting of this comparison, given how things ended for the old Berlin when the Soviets arrived, isn’t lost on her.
The things she loved best in her Kyiv life were her independence as a successful and creative businesswoman and her flat, which is filled with vintage Turkish rugs, plants, classic Italian furniture she found at flea markets and auctions, and a pair of French windows she brought back from Paris. “Where I live is so pretty, it’s really my cup of tea,” she says, dropping a British colloquialism into her faltering English. “It’s where I love being with my daughter and I kept thinking, whatever happens, we will stay.”
To a degree, she’s experienced political turmoil before. In 2014, Litkovskaya was in her Paris showroom when revolution broke out in Ukraine. But this is different. This is war on the streets of her city and the sense of disbelief is profound for her generation.
“We all kept telling ourselves it will be all right. How can they invade us? I have Russian friends, I learned Russian at school. Some of my team, depending on where they come from in Ukraine, speak Russian more than they speak Ukrainian. But when I heard those explosions and the sirens I thought, ‘I have to get out for the sake of Radomyra.’ Our government wasn’t straight with us for a long time. They didn’t tell us what was really going on even though we all had an uneasy feeling about the situation.”
The interconnection runs deep. Litkovskaya was taught in Ukrainian at school but at home the family spoke Russian. She only adopted Ukrainian as the official language of her company two years ago. Yet the sense of pride in her country is fierce. She designs clothes for an international market using Italian fabrics, but everything is made in Ukraine. During the pandemic she set up an independent school to teach Ukrainian students the top to bottom of fashion, from economics to pattern cutting.
The daughter of a maths teacher (her late father) and a long line of tailors on her mother’s side, Litkovskaya was initially discouraged from pursuing a career in fashion by her family. “Things hadn’t ended well for any of them business wise,” she says.
It was her passion and she defied them, setting up her own label of sophisticated, dramatic but minimalist designs, in 2009. For now she has no idea whether her extended family of freelance crafters will be able to complete her collections. “I told my team to stay at home yesterday,” she says, “but some of them went in anyway and called me from the studio to tell me they were OK.”
She brushes away a tear. On Saturday morning, she WhatsApped to let me know her team were now in underground shelters, including her head of sales who had been listening in on our initial chat as an interpreter. Her mother had told her there were now gunshots firing in the streets.
I ask what her plan is. “Honestly, I don’t have one yet. I need to get my head together. I’m worried about my mother and my brother. I’m worried about my business. I don’t know at the moment if it’s feasible to continue. But I’m lucky. I have friends in Paris, in Italy and Greece and they’re all offering to help. Maybe for a while, I’ll have to accept.”