There is “East” meets “West”. And then there is Chechnya meets Belarus… Disclaimer: my own cultural DNA stems from both slightly south of Minsk and north of the Caucasus. So, naturally, I have become completely obsessed with APTI EZIEV. As a designer, and an alter ego 🙂 His fall-winter collection presented at St. Petersburg Fashion Week in Russia secures his positioning as the most exciting creature to come out of the post-Soviet neck of the fashion woods in the last pyatiletka (the notorious five year progress plans). While it was his bags that got early press ‘n buyer attention (the artisan trademark bags maintain gadget-ability with a solid retro cred), for me it is all about those coats! You can call ‘em unisex but they are just pure sexxx. His coats are cut with a relief of a torn sail. I mean that in an explicitly romanticized way. They are strikingly beautiful objects first, unconventionally crafted clothes second. Honestly, within few seasons, I have not met an Eziev coat I didn’t want to get inside, immediately. Yet APTI EZIEV is not your average bad boy. You can take that worn-out trigger-happy enfant terrible label and shove it. There is such authentic don’t-give-a-fuck lightness in Eziev’s private and couturier style that it gives me personal and professional vertigo. To steady myself I better hold on to something firm like my desire to sport at least one of those things! Admit it. You too are in love. Stalk (politely) Apti Eziev’s Instagram for regular shots of coolness. Don’t tell mama.