Ludmila Tarakanova: My Unique Design Philosophy and Journey in Men’s Fashion

Ludmila Tarakanova: My Unique Design Philosophy and Journey in Men’s Fashion

TARAKANOVA is a renowned brand in men’s fashion. The creator of the brand, Ludmila Tarakanova, was awarded the National Belarusian Fashion Award (Belarus National Fashion Award by Zorka) in the category “Men’s Fashion Designer” in 2017 and 2018. Additionally, she was voted “The Most Stylish Designer” by media representatives in 2011 and “The Best Designer of the Year” in 2012. Ludmila shares her professional journey, the brand’s style, capsule collections, and her new collection with the readers of “City of Women”.

The Brand Name

The formation of the TARAKANOVA brand was influenced by several factors. Initially, it was connected to my maiden name and the memory of my beloved father, Vladimir Ivanovich, who received a significant dose of radiation after serving on the K-19 submarine. Friends jokingly call me “radioactive.” In 2000, I dedicated one of my collections, “Remember. Love. Lyuda,” to him. Secondly, the famous Moscow arranger, poet, and composer Anatoly Lopatin suggested featuring these amusing insects on my logo, as we all have our own “cockroaches” in our heads. A bold proposal, isn’t it? Moreover, it symbolizes being in constant motion and eternal search, just like my running cockroaches.

The Journey into Fashion Design

My interest in fashion design began in childhood. My guardian angel, my wonderful mother, Ekaterina Yermilovna, worked as a seamstress in a workshop and constantly sewed fashionable outfits at night. My grandmother, Nadezhda Antonovna Tarakanova, was the first seamstress in the village of Zolotukhino, Kursk region. Her large chest of fabrics, the amazing Singer sewing machine, the huge leather sofa with folding rollers, and the mirror on top where she slept surrounded by pattern pieces… And the smell of the iron! How could I not be inspired by all this? “Only an artist, only an artist!” I repeated to myself in childhood.

At 15, I attempted to enter the Ryazan Art School for the costume design department. However, my school was reluctant to let me go. I experienced my first conscious humiliation, which no child should ever endure. My class teacher suggested that I would end up on the streets if I pursued art. It was only after my mother’s intervention that I received the necessary recommendation. This painful memory still brings tears to my eyes. I was an excellent student, independent, and modest, raised in a family where foul language was never used. I was a leader and always found ways to help my class excel.

Choosing Men’s Fashion Design

I have always been friends with boys, climbing roofs, hanging on fences, and tearing my coat without my parents scolding me. They trusted me, which was crucial as they treated me as an equal. This is why I created the “Boys” collection, the first of my collections presented at Belarus Fashion Week and Lviv Fashion Week.

I have always loved walking and running, just like I used to ski for 3 km and 10 km distances in my native Ryazan and Moscow during my institute years. In childhood, I also shot with boys in the school shooting range and on polygons, went on long trips in kayaks along the rivers of Mordovia and along the tributaries of the beloved Oka, which inspired the “Okaem” collection. How can I not love the guys if I am the daughter of a submariner? How can I not love the male body if my father was always slim, pumped up, and fit…

The First Sewn Item

Yes, of course, I remember. By the age of 20, I had sewn a lot for myself. Various dresses made of wool and velvet, a denim cape with a pilot cap, quilted coats with zippers, a drap coat in a men’s style, and gabardine in an ethnic style with an unusual hat with a polar fox and a fur muff… Was it really so? Yes, there was a desire from the first grade to sit at the sewing machine like my mother. And when, after the first unsuccessful attempt, breaking the needle, I realized to run to our neighbor to return everything to its original state, women only discussed my resourcefulness.

The first thing was a short denim skirt, a fashionable A-silhouette, sewn at the age of 11. Before that, of course, there were trial aprons and a cotton nightgown according to the school program, but that doesn’t count, because all the girls sewed then. It’s a pity that modern schools have removed the subject “Home Economics” from the curriculum, motivating it with safety violations and fear of sewing fingers. But I didn’t sew them. Further, in the 6th and 7th grades, there were dresses, so neat that when I look at them, coming to my mother on vacation, I am in complete amazement at the skill and accuracy of the eye.

In the 8th grade, I sewed a dress-suit for my mother. I really wanted to dress her up and please her. The model was complex – fitted, which clearly pleased my father, made of reddish small-patterned chintz with white streaks, with figured cuts and a rounded configuration of “framed” pockets in the new look style. I introduced white fabric trims, shortened the silhouette, slightly narrowing the skirt, which clearly enlivened the model and gave it a modern look of the early 1980s. I was helped in this by an edition popular in the mid-60s, which can still be found in the home libraries of older women. It was a beautiful thick book with images of Lenochka Krylova from “Carnival Night,” ensembles, and, most importantly, understandable patterns. My mother keeps that dress as a relic and always says what a hardworking and diligent girl I was: secretly from her, I additionally enrolled in the city sewing circle, and combined all this with music school in the violin class, which I graduated from. I love to bring everything to the end, to the finish line, and I can’t do everything at the same time. I am characterized by meticulousness to the millimeter, deliberation, and consistency in my work. Of course, it was a child’s creativity, but at the same time very serious.

I remember how during a kayak trip, our hands got very sunburned, and I took off my knee-highs, put them on my hands like gloves up to my elbows, and rowed in complete self-satisfaction. My ingenuity delighted our leaders, and for many years afterward, this story about me was told in school. That’s design at 14!

The First Collection

Regarding the first collection, I can recall the first joint show with students from the Amsterdam College of Design. We, students of the Moscow Textile Institute, were happy. Of course, we did not understand that the wind of change had touched fashion design as well. And it all started with our group. It was a wonderful school when I enthusiastically observed the backstage nuances, how the models’ shoes were lined up, how the tags of the exit sequence were hung, how the entire organization of the show and the stylistics of the direction were conducted. Then, my sketches were eagerly taken as gifts by students from Holland, and the collection itself, “Petrov Times,” was noted with a publication in the then cool publication “Student Meridian.” It was from this moment, from November 1988, that I began to count my activity.

Achievements

My achievements are victories over myself. Diligence and discipline have not been canceled by anyone. The most important thing for me is self-development and the usefulness of information processing, even in the most challenging times.