Elvira Gasanova has a natural eye for designing exceptionally cultivated womenswear. Like any modern woman, she manages a dozen roles. She manages and designs for a multi-tiered fashion business, one that leans heavily into couture, she’s devoted to her family, makes a point of giving back to her community and supporting the Ukrainian fashion industry.
I’ve been privileged to speak with GASANOVA’s founder a few times, and while preparing for the conversation I just had with her, I was looking through her recent, truly magnificent evening wear for GASANOVA Couture. Every time I see her designs I am moved by how refined and elegant the work is. This time, I made a note to myself to ask Elvira about the names she chose for each gown, cloak and cape. These sorts of details fascinate me, often they are indicators of stories, and I very much wanted to know how they were assigned.
“Some of them are the names of our clients,” Elvira Gasanova told me when we met over Zoom. “Clients who come to me with a question, or who want something specific. Sometimes after I understand what they want, I really like it and I want to include something like it in our next collection. So the name comes from them. Some names are from the A-list celebrities with whom we work, sometimes even if they don’t wear us yet. There are different reasons, a few of them are just names that we like. Then we have one which shares my daughter’s name.”
A model wears the Karina dress and Diva cape.
Courtesy of GASANOVA
Thanking a client this way, both for their business and for inspiration that leads to the creation of something sumptuous in the future, it seemed like an appreciative way to acknowledge her customers. Especially since these are often women who come back to GASANOVA, season after season, specifically because she creates the type of gorgeous gowns that make photographers perk up and want to take more photographs.
That connection between a designer, or brand, and the people they dress matters. Everyone wants to be seen. We all want to be heard. Relationships matter and it’s is wonderful to get to speak with people who know this and choose to make it part of their business model.
Inspiring Clients to Dream Big
GASANOVA was founded in Donetsk in November of 2013, and in the years between its beginning and today the state of the world has changed several times. Though her most recent couture collection was designed only in black and white, Gasanova is a designer who utilizes textiles in a manner that deftly gives the impression of a much more varied palette. Elvira has always had an exceptional eye, and over the years this writer has seen that her designs are consistently as resplendent as they are dignified.
A model wears the Lolita top and Bubble pants.
Courtesy of GASANOVA
I thought about this a lot while looking at GASANOVA’s couture capes and evening gowns, the range of shades her clothing explores, the distance created between matte taffeta and glossy silk. Finding beauty, making and sharing it, it feels extra generous right now. This is clothing that offers reasons to dream big and goals to aspire to. It feels very important, the intangible energy that naturally accompanies optimism about the future. I asked the designer about the vitality of creating in this moment, if she and her clients were helped, as I felt I was, by the joy inherent in these ethereal designs.
“Of course,” Gasanova said with a small smile, and her eyes lit up with memories. “Right now we make our special moments, our happy moments ourselves. For me, it is very important that my clients come to us right now when they need something special. It could be a wedding, a birthday, anything. It is incredibly important to make people happy, and to know that they think of GASANOVA when they think of their special day.”
It is incredibly important to dream, to assume that the future will be better, that is what couture like this whispers.
There is value in beauty that I don’t think we acknowledge or discuss often enough. Excellent design inspires us, reminds us of what could be possible, it gives us things to be hopeful for when life is scary or the human world is doing its worst.
A model wears the Margot Leather Top with Crystals.
Courtesy of GASANOVA
“Ukraine has been in this situation for a lot of years,” Gasanova told me. “For us it’s not a safe place right now and nobody knows where safety is. I cannot speak for everyone, but I think Ukrainians really have learned to live in this time. Everybody has their bubble that they’ve made where they live. All of us try to help the army, to provide help to other people, and this really was a super hard winter. But it’s really important to understand that, in your bubble, you are really important, you make something special and help the people in your bubble by doing things that can make them feel happy. This is our way to live right now.”
Couture That Reaffirms Brand DNA
While I was indulging my eyes on her latest work I kept finding myself making notes about the luxurious ways she was adding volume. I like the idea of clothing that would not apologize for taking up space. It felt good to know that there were women all over the world who felt that a gown like that was the one they needed to wear.
Gasanova’s designs feel like blooming. They are confidently voluminous, elegant but demanding attention in a way that feels refreshingly decadent. I wanted to know what had convinced her to move in this direction, how she made it all look and feel like so much fun. Lovely Reader, these are evening looks which exceed fantasies.
A model wears the Dzvina Dress,
Courtesy of GASANOVA
“During 13 years of GASANOVA we’ve seen a lot,” Elvira told me. “The war started, and before that there was the pandemic. At the beginning of COVID nobody wanted to buy special dresses, but in the second year we saw that a lot of our clients, the ones who buy pieces for events like red carpets, began to make smaller events for themselves and buy those types of clothes for parties at home.”
“The last couture collection was made in all black and white,” Gasanova continued. “This was a return to our DNA. The difficult situation with the war in Ukraine had us making more basic things, our sportswear line, denim, because people here don’t have a lot of holidays or parties. But couture was always at the heart of GASANOVA, and we returned to our DNA because we feel that we want to make special things for our clients. So, we don’t need to wait for something, we decided to make it ourselves. ”
To celebrate the new couture collection, to introduce it to her clientele, Elvira wanted to stage an event which would match this perspective and attitude.
A model wears the GG Corset Shorts With Crystals.
Courtesy of GASANOVA
“For Spring/Summer we organized a big presentation,” she told me, “a special evening, a dinner for our clients. It was all about black tie; long dresses, lots of volume, it was really our big return. And our next collection, which will be a big show in April, it too will have these types of dresses, but they will be made in happy colors. I told my team, it will be more colorful.”
I wanted to know what was inspiring her as she looks towards the future, what kept Elvira optimistic about the future.
“My clients always inspire me,” Gasanova said with a large, lovely smile. As I said, Spring/Summer is going to be super colorful, I think it’s our most colorful collection in the last ten years. Our couture collection, that’s the one coming at the end of April, we are going to celebrate life. We will celebrate and will try to make things better. We are going to make a big social project, a contribution that will celebrate life and help our country celebrate all that we have right now. We will not waste our time, we’re going to do it right now.”
A model wears the Marianna dress in white.
Courtesy of GASANOVAGASANOVA: Iconic Only
On the brand’s website, there’s the phrase ‘Iconic Only’, and I understood from our earlier conversations that the word ‘iconic’ was important to Elvira and to her brand. That creating designs which felt defined by the word was a goal she’d long ago created for herself and was committed to living up to, as she obviously does, with each collection that comes out under her name. I asked her what, specifically, this pair of words means to her now, what it means to her clients, and if that has changed since the goals she’d set when founding her eponymous house.
“Women are so strong,” Gasanova said to me. “We want every GASANOVA woman to feel iconic, and we try to make and use words which can live with that goal of our brand. We’ve used ‘Iconic Only’ for five years, I think, and we understand that what GASANOVA makes needs to match that. Our clients know it, and they know that ‘iconic’ is about GASANOVA.”
Perhaps that phrase is the best way to frame the work this designer does; the commitment it promises and then lives up, the staggering quantity of work that goes into making certain it feels true with each new collection. These are not just beautiful clothes, they are made with thought and intention, from a company founded and led by a rather incredible woman who makes a point of only producing work which lives up to the standards she has set for herself. Elvira knows her worth, she knows the worth of her clients, and making apparel and couture which matches that energy is something that brings her a lot of joy.
A model wears the Paris Crystal Skirt With Shorts.
Courtesy of GASANOVA
“GASANOVA began from the understanding that I wanted to make a brand that was something special,” the founder told me. “It’s not about everyday clothes, though of course we have more basic lines. But our DNA is the special dress, the iconic dress, our crystal dresses, because I think it is important for women to feel and know that every day is special. Especially right now, when we live in this horrible time and don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
“For me, it is important to understand that, right now, women don’t want to wait,” Elvira Gasanova said. “They want to live and make something big right now. I think it is super powerful, that understanding that we only have this time, only today, and maybe not tomorrow. It’s really only about today. And GASANOVA is about making this day into something truly special.”
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