Send Anna Wintour: An interview with the founder of the Gapanovich brand about the distant north, Russian culture code and designer’s career

Recently, local brands are rapidly gaining acceleration, weight and importance. Almost every week, the fashion arena emerges new players with great ambition and bright abilities. We always watch such projects closely, we will definitely convey you to the names of Anna Wintour, which you should definitely know.

The new hero of the title was the founder of Gapanovich, a designer from Murmansk, Alexander Gapanovich. The width of the network is almost confident that you see the fantasy snow -white images inspired by the nature of the distant North. The models in Gapanovich are transformed from Russian fairy tales to magnificent princesses, and the designer skillfully reinterprets local cultural codes, turns into a traditional costume and works with memory theme. Mix local images, patterns and details when creating collections.

Today we recommend you to get to know Alexandra better, what inspiration, which designers affect him, that his path is fashionable and what the main failure in his career is. So let’s start?

Gapanovich.

Simple, this is my daughter’s surname.

In 2012.

Gapanovich rethinks the traditional cultural code and moves to modern reading.

I am designing from the age of 17 and I am a cutter of external women’s clothes according to the profession. So the first thing I created was a jacket.

For creative, brave and confident women who inspire and know what they want from life. They are not afraid to try and prepare to lead.

From the search for your style for many years training, mistakes and experiments. Although the brand emerged in 2012, a turning point in the development of ten years later occurred. In 2021, I noticed that I needed a pressure to develop more. Then I rebelled the brand’s DNA and did a deep internal business, so that the brand appeared the way you see it.

When I started to be designed, there were no concepts such as brand DNA, positioning or value. It was a few years ago, and we have experimentally removed all the information from the books. Therefore, at the beginning I did not have a task of creating a brand, I understood my essence for a long time: I am a creative person and I could talk through the outside world through clothing collections. This is a life story that he understands what I want to do with the growth of personality. As you know now, the brand has just emerged because of my personal need. There was no source of inspiration, motivated the natural stage of the movement towards development.

I always liked what Vivien Westwood and John Galliano do. These are the complex, deep designers who create more than clothes. This is an art, and such artists cannot be forgotten. I look at their creations with great admiration and focus on them at some points.

Many layer, femininity and nostalgia.

Probably sincerely. Thanks to the collections, I’m talking about what’s close to me, and it’s worried about me. This is not a work of cultural code from a scientific point of view, but a visualization of what I feel. I am a Russian man, I lived in the village, I went after the mushrooms and strawberries. I remember the smell of straw and chest in my grandmother’s house. All of this was absorbed very naturally and organically by the subconscious, they only brought happiness. Therefore, I usually use the place where I was born in the visual. What a beautiful Murmansk and Kola Peninsula.

Today’s self, and tomorrow I – these can be two completely different people. However, perhaps I am extinct in the Gapanovich collection that something intentionally will not appear. Even though I am not sure about Lateks, it’s an interesting material in this business, but the aesthetics itself is not close to me in my context.

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week to take grants and participation in Moscow fashion weeks, victory in the Russian Silhouette competition, cooperate with an ethnographic museum. And the last one of such pleasant things -2025 began with the inclusion of the brand in the degree of the first 50 influential designers of Russia.

It’s hard to say about failure, I’m trying to be philosophical in life. I made the collections on the table, there were situations where I succumbed to someone else’s opinion and did not answer me. All this was for a long time, in the early stages of the brand’s appearance, when I could still overcome the external pressure. But still, I don’t perceive it as a failure. This helped me understand that it wasn’t important with an experience and sincerity. You just need to focus on your possession and never change yourself.

Join yourself, support yourself and edit yourself. No one can find power and give up. There may be many obstacles on the road, but this is normal. It is important to be with yourself in Lada without reacting to external stimuli, to stop comparison, to isolate from everything external, and to go your own way.

According to the same road so far: Slow, but true. We have a small brand and a small team, but reliable and dear. I want us to continue to turn into such valuable people who love our business. You don’t find them very often and you really feed them. In this way, I want to continue and apply all my plans: to make good, beautiful shows and collections, more professional, better and developed in the profession.

Work. I see fashion as an artist in contact with the existing information in the world. I suck in the collections, process and release. When you know all this, it can be called stylish and relevant to your business. Such questions should not be examined, you will probably not be in the context of time. Therefore, for me, fashion is equal to the present time.

I would make an interactive boutique that resembles the nature of the Kola Peninsula. In Murmansk, I would create a creative cluster designed for several generations to help the development of creative youth. I also constantly help animals, because they are the most vulnerable part of our planet.

I want to see something like Lady Gaga. It seems to me that he would make my volume perfectly.

A group of algae, stone or swamp from Kola Peninsula.

Something with leopard pressure. Everyone was already tired of him.

Something very cramped, concise, simple, close to primitive.

Naomi Campbell.