Natasha Zinko. Pre-Fall 2025







 (Images: Natasha Zinko 2025)


After 9 years, Demna Gvasalia is moving to Gucci from Balenciaga, to save the Kering, the holding company of both Balenciaga and Gucci, share price, which has taken a major hit from the China recession, and now Trump's poker game of tariffs on the whole world, in a vain effort to shut down America's import markets.  And the big question in the fashion industry at the moment; who will take the creative reins of Balenciaga?  Could it be Ukrainian fashion designer Natasha Zinko?  Just a guess, as she very much follows in the footsteps of the Georgian Gvasalia brother's, Guram of Vetements and Demna, the former Balenciaga creative director, now of Gucci, anti fashion ethos.  Who both successfully imprinted the Eastern European backlash attitude towards the West, with its residual love/hate relationship of Western consumption after Eastern Europe opened up in the 1990s with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and global interconnectivity and cross border trade occurred, and East Europe rave attendees didn't have to wear knockoffs of Adidas anymore.  So, she would definitely fit that Gvasalia backlash benchmark, which Demna laid down for Balenciaga.  

Zinko who is probably one of the last remaining avant-garde, and independent fashion designers still standing, with a penice for the macabe and bizarre within the realms of popular culture.  Seen with her Spring 2025 collection of a society that has embraced 'fast food' cosmetic surgery en masse, be it in your local shopping mall, a clinic that can give you a lip filler experience in less than 30 minutes, with later bruising and lumpy after effects hours later.  In which Zinco's Spring collection emphases, her Pre-Fall 2025 collection is the post recovery, be it a more extensive plastic surgery experience.

In the vein of Demna and Guram's boxy and exaggerated tailoring, recut and shaped with post modern flare.  Zinko's latest collection holds very much its similar style, themed around bandage styles wrap around tops and skirts, with compressed medical style fabrics.  Yet, Zinko's styling is impeccable and so are her fittings, thus assisting in setting down an original template for her signature label, without overly plagiarizing.  She is, as mentioned, unique, with her subculture tastes and interest in crafting her aesthetic of the antithesis.

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(A.Glass 2025)

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