The Tamesis
Bevza’s label Ukrainian designer Svitlana Bevza thought in her mind about the works of the early 20th century artist Kazimir Malevich. The Kiev-born artist is respected for his avant-garde abstract art, after years of his 1932 young women’s paintings in wheat fields turned into more symbolic abstractions. Bevza itself is undoubtedly an abstract imagery hand, and her work draws on the purity of the same lines and shapes, rather than her collection of fashion, meditation, graphics on the Linear Spring 2026 collection. It is on display in a sun-filled industrial building west of Chelsea, with a palette of white and black contrasting with scorching carrot red, deep sea and softest, butterest yellow.
“Malivich is the father of modernism,” Besa said. “He used the square, which is where I started when I cut this series. It was a very stable shape, but it didn’t look physically aggressive because the wearer and their personality shape any fabric.” She certainly could manipulate her pancakes, bamboo clothes and dense cotton well. There is an inventive and well-achieved zippered square/skirt (can be worn either way, and is a rare example of many designers obsessed with this NYFW and put a square flat amount on a woman’s body and can actually work); a liquid jersey wears such a rigorous fabric to control the fabric (as good as Hussein Chalayan, which I absolutely mean is a huge compliment); and a geometric shirt worn with a skirt with a long cube crossbar.
Of course, the span of Malevich’s art – the futurism of geometric futurism of brain perception of his latter’s work – also shows a greater vision of Bevza’s life, as it was the war in Ukraine, who has lived with her children since 2023 in London, and she recently with her husband and yours, and how you feel in this collection. It has the idea of creating power, and the connection between people and their home landscape.
Wheat has long been associated with Ukraine, and Bewa’s jewelry uses it as a leitmotif and is used by Ukrainian diaspora as a symbol of solidarity and memory. This season, Bevza paints it white with a white single-chain necklace or a more eye-catching mask. She can tell you from the most modest words about the challenges of Ukrainian teams in Ukraine to continue working, co-create and communicate, and expand on how fashion can be a exercise of dignity and resistance. So much so that she will open her first store in Kiev later this year. It’s a landmark moment for any designer who has worked for nearly 20 years, but for Bevza and her team, they’re experiencing unimaginable daily challenges, which is nothing more than an absolute victory.
