Litskovska SS26
There are moments in fashion when the runway transcends fabric and silhouette to become something far larger, a living testimony to human resilience. For Lilia Litkovska, that has always been her purpose. LITKOVSKA never lets you forget that she is a Ukrainian designer; her voice is clear, unwavering, and urgently human. Every show becomes a call not only for social justice but for conscious reflection, a reminder that style and substance must coexist if fashion hopes to have meaning beyond its seams.
This season, the SS26 collection, aptly titled “(DIS)CONNECTED,” opened with a haunting monologue by a Ukrainian poet. The words, too honest for social media’s filters, spoke of war, displacement, and the quiet ache of survival. When I tried to upload the clip with closed captioning, it was removed for containing “sensitive content.” But that is precisely what makes Litkovska’s work essential. When the words are censored, her designs step in, vivid and unsparing, to speak the truth.
Litkovska’s “(DIS)CONNECTED” is a tactile meditation on fragile balances; belonging and detachment, visibility and invisibility, silence and voice. Drawing on the philosophy of art brut, which celebrates raw, unpolished individuality, the collection explores the tension between freedom and conformity. The set’s centerpiece, a camouflage mesh reimagined in pink, transformed a material meant to conceal Ukrainian soldiers into a symbol of reclamation. What once was meant to blend in now dares to be seen.
The garments themselves live at the intersection of strength and vulnerability. Loose linens, deconstructed tailoring and unfinished seams invite imperfection. While hand carved wooden flowers, worn as jewelry, and structural corsets celebrate craft as armor. Delicate lace, silk, and embroidery flow against the heft of denim, embodying Litkovska’s belief that beauty emerges only when contrasts collide. Each piece was designed to evolve with the wearer, unfolding, unfastening, or transforming, a quiet rebellion against rigidity.
A live performance by Yuri Khustochka and Irena Karpa threaded the collection with sound and verse. Their collaboration filled the space like an open wound and a healing balm all at once, poetry and music converging to narrate a country’s defiance and tenderness.
As the models drifted past, wrapped in textiles both fragile and armed with intention, I felt that timeless merge of fashion and humanity that Litkovska has mastered. “(DIS)CONNECTED” is not merely a show, it is a mirror held to our collective psyche. It whispers that the fight is not only at the frontlines but within ourselves, in staying truthful to our ideals when apathy feels easier. And in her unwavering authenticity, Litkovska leaves us with a question that will linger long after Paris clears its runways; When we feel most detached, might that be the very moment we are most profoundly connected to our truth and to one another?
