Anna October Resort 2023

Holding up a pale pink and ivory satin slip dress from Anna October’s collection, it sinks in that the person who’d devoted so much skill and attention to perfecting its bias-cut patchwork was sewing it in Kyiv, while air raid warnings were going off. October fled Ukraine and managed to make her way to Paris with a backpack in the early part of the Russian invasion. How she’s continued to produce another collection between Paris and her studio in Kyiv says everything about her own and her young compatriots’ optimistic powers of organization and resilience. “It’s been like a movie. A real movie,” she said, shaking her blonde hair and smiling calmly. Friends who had worked for October before the war making her pretty, romantic clothes were determined to continue. People who’d sheltered in the city, the countryside, and some who’d gone to neighboring countries began to reassemble when the capital seemed safer. “We had fittings on Zoom, while there were air raid alerts. I could hear it. I was like girls, do want to go to the bomb shelter? Shall we stop? And they were like no, we’re fine. Continue the fitting. It was surreal.”