“It’s a picture of my granny Maiia Smirnova. She was a modelling designer in the Republican Modelling House. She quitted her job in the late 1970s due to constant pressure from the art council. “You work on a new collection for several months, you create interesting designs in the face of a constant deficit of interesting fabrics and then some party member's wife tells you: ‘I wouldn’t wear it’ or ‘I wouldn’t have bought it for my daughter’. At some point my patience ran out and I quitted” - she recollected. My granny became a private entrepreneur which was illegal in the USSR then. She sewed clothes on a by-order basis at home for women then called ‘zamovnitsi’ (ordering customers). Among clients of Maiia Smirnova were actress Raisa Nedashkivska, assistant director of Kyiv State Museum of Western and Eastern art (today Khanenko Museum) Olena Roslavets, professor of Taras Shevchenko State (today National) University of Kyiv Khalida Bakhtiyarova - all renown for their elegance and personal style. In the picture Maiia Smirnova is wearing a combination of silver fox palatine with a karakul hat”.

Comment by Pavla Nikitina.

This photo is contributed by Pavla Nikitina.