Bevza Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear Runway, Fashion Show & Collection Review

There has been precious little politics at New York Fashion Week this season, but Ukrainian designer Svitlana Bevza’s mere presence was a reminder of the ongoing war, and the much-needed American aid package winding its way through Congress.

The designer, who founded Bevza in 2006 in Kiev, where it is still produced, chose a symbolic venue — the Ukrainian Institute of America, which was founded by Ukrainian immigrant William Dzus in 1948, to protect and promote his culture which was being muted by the Soviets, she said.

Bevza has been going back and forth from London, where her kids are now in school, to Kiev, where her husband and business remain. “The main mission is to continue to tell about our cultural heritage…and as a designer I have a medium to tell about the beautiful parts of Ukraine and the main thing that we are fighting for, which is grain,” she said of incorporating the Spikelet shape hardware, after a sacred Ukrainian symbol of fertile land, into some of her fall 2024 clothing and accessories — as clasps holding together the sides of a gray double-face wool funnel neck poncho, or adorning the neckline of a bias-cut silk dress, for example, and T-bars on shoes, expanding on her successful Spikelet jewelry, and now Spikelet handbags ranges.

Following the link from grain to bread led the designer to apron dresses, which she rendered beautifully in several materials and shapes, including viscose and vegan leather, alongside feminine suiting, while the “Kosa” braided bread pattern became a stitch on a chunky knit open vest.

Traditional “Kozukh” sheepskin coats added texture and were adapted into a pretty rounded cream puffer coat, and a cream double-face wool coat with shawl detail. It was a gorgeous lineup that had a lot to add to the season’s minimalist fashion conversation, and should make Bevza one to watch alongside Toteme and others leading the look.

“It’s important to know a lot of the money that goes to Ukraine is from America, but my mission is to show the aesthetic part of it so maybe people start to Google differently,” she said during a preview before expanding on the current state of affairs.

“I believe that we will win this war. The price people are paying, too many victims, too many civilians. I went to Ukraine two weeks ago, when I arrived there was another air raid alert. Sirens. I was driving from the train station in an area that usually they hit, I don’t know why they hit, the rockets, there’s nothing in this area. Some machine in Russia stands in one direction and just shoots rockets there. So I asked the driver if he could go quickly through this area. And in 20 minutes rockets hit there. So when I’m not there I live in a parallel reality.”

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