What happened to the tsar of streetwear Gosha Rubchinskiy?

It seemed to be the eternal promise of streetwear made in Russia, of a storytelling destined to be handed down among generations of young hypebeasts, with very successful collaborations such as Burberry, Adidas, Fila, yet the Gosha empire can be declared to have come to an end.

A rather serious mistake made in 2018 meant the end of Gosha Rubchinskiy, sudden and with no way out. Despite the already written path of years of success that preceded him in the future imaginary of all fashion addicts and the continuous denials about the guilt that he declined to have around the accusations leveled against him, for the post-Soviet designer the sudden fall into oblivion it was clear and definitive.

The boom in Cold War aesthetics and poor, ferrous public housing pioneered by Gosha Rubchinskiy and Georgian Demna Gvasalia had been so misleading for mass fashion that Cyrillic lettering, hooligan allure and shaved heads were also on the agenda. for fast fashion like H&M and Urban Outfitters.

The fate of the two precursors of post-Soviet fashion was, however, very different. Demna, after having coined Vetements and after launching oversized sweatshirts, slovenliness, stiletto heels made with lighters and hats with high-end visors, has turned towards Paris, refining its still raw project and finding a communicative path between the ideology written in its background and marketability.

Then, when he arrived at Balenciaga, his path evolved a lot from the first experiments and front slogans in Cyrillic, soon even preparing for Haute Couture, as we have detailed in this article.

For Gosha, the future seemed perhaps even more promising, starting from his most influential friendship with the founder of Dover Street Market and Rei Kawakubo’s husband, Adrian Joffe, who, in addition to having launched him into the trees of his career, continued to assure him perpetually sold out collaborations with the London institution of Dover and which had slowly inserted him into a network of contacts so dense as to guarantee him eternal stability.

A few months before the scandal that sees him as the subject of requests for nude photos of minors, in April 2018, Rubchinskiy announced on instagram that there would be changes for his brand, indeed, he announced the closure of Gosha Rubchinskiy “as we knew it”. Adding in a conversation with Vogue shortly thereafter:

“Every idea has a time and what I wanted to express, I expressed it. I believe that in the state that [Gosha Rubchinskiy] exists, it is a good condition to end this history and start a new one.”

From this statement, followed shortly after by the forced tabloid stop, more than 3 years have passed, and Gosha has not been heard of again except for unsuccessful experiments or for projects with not very clear purposes.

An example of this is his latest born GR UNIFORMA, a mix of fashion, photography and the usual post-Soviet anger made a little more combed by a strong football and a little British influence.

Although Gosha has tried to make the newborn brand collaborate with his old friendships, dusting off very successful previous partnerships such as Adidas and Dover Street Market, it seems that the time of Gosha is now over, the ancient splendor still far from a new period of gold and the coincidence between the designer’s choices of upheavals for the brand and his mistakes, a fatal unfavorable combination.

To know more:

Gosha Rubchinskiy instagram

GR Uniforma instagram

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Posted By

Laura Morone

Attratta dall’inaspettato e dai giri di parole. Fashion Designer disobbediente alle prime armi, distinta da una vena polemica e una vocazione alla perpetua ricerca del contorto. Vivo di folgorazioni artistiche e pizza a colazione, scrivo di moda ma parlo di me.