Two years ago I lived in Kyiv with my minister husband. Now I'm running a fashion label in London

Telegraph

20-02-2025

In the winter of 2022, Svitlana Bevza left Kyiv with her two young children, schoolgirl English and one suitcase. She can still remember what she packed for herself because there was so little space – some sweaters, casual trousers, a coat and a box full of mascaras. 'I know you can get mascara in the West, but it was automatic,' she says, laughing.
She can make jokes despite Ukraine's plight because that's the best way to survive. It also shows just how quickly she's grasped English and its cultural nuances.
When she first fled Ukraine – leaving her husband there because Ukrainian males under 60 have generally been obliged to stay since war broke out at the start of 2022 in case they were called on to fight – she and the children headed to Portugal, a country with which she had some familiarity having manufactured her then fourteen-year-old eponymous fashion line there. But after a year, she moved to London, partly for the education system, found a flat near Victoria, got the children into good schools, set up her label here and discovered that Londoners love wearing Wellingtons and a lot of ivory-coloured coats. 'That surprised me,' she says.
Her label, Bevza, like its 42-year-old founder, is all elegant, interesting simplicity. There are rectangular maxi skirts in grey wool or dark denim with a single seam and paper-bag waist; satin tunics with neckerchief collars, matt-gold sequinned pinafore dresses and felt tunics with funnel necks and gold chain fastenings. In 2014, she gained international recognition through an Italian Vogue competition – the first Ukranian designer to win it. Where most of her peers in Kyiv were big on experimental statements, like a Slavic Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, she knew that subtlety and sophistication were the way for her to go.
Two weeks ago, her autumn/winter 2025 collection was on the catwalk as part of New York Fashion Week. If anything, she says, the war has made her streamline and contextualise her clothes even more. Wearing a long pale grey skirt (made from one oblong piece of felted wool) with a gold buckled belt and black pullover, she moves with the ease of someone wearing jeans, while looking so much more distinctive.
Sophisticated and timeless, her clothes are arresting but easy to wear at any time of the day, and based on squares and rectangles. 'From the age of five or six I wanted to be a fashion designer,' she says. 'I always drew dresses.' A family friend introduced her to the Vogue branding that was emblazoned on a box of matches she had in her bag. 'I thought Vogue was a glamorous name for matches,' she says. 'I didn't know anything about the magazine back then.' And yet the seed was sown.
She didn't train formally in fashion. Her librarian mother and physicist father were sufficiently stylish to somehow source flared jeans and velvet blazers for themselves. 'I don't know how they managed to source those clothes,' she says, 'because when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, just wearing foreign jeans could get you into trouble. But I think when times are tough, clothes become even more precious. People in Kyiv like to dress up even now.'
Fashion lovers her parents may have been, but they had no intention of encouraging their daughter to forge a career in such a precarious field. 'They wanted me to do something sensible,' she laughs. So she read economics, which has come in handy as she navigates running a business between London and war-torn Ukraine.
Fortunately, she loves problem solving. The part of her brain that enjoys economics also likes solving sartorial puzzles. Even the pouches for her necklaces are rectangular – and far more practical than any others I've seen. She also designs belts, bags and jewellery, playing on the spiky silhouette of the wheatsheaf, an emblem of Ukraine which, before the war, was the world's bread basket. 'It's a kind of subtle propaganda,' she jokes.
When she launched in 2006, most Ukrainian designers were exploring experimental, expressive fashion. 'I wanted to make clothes that people would actually wear,' she says. 'Something Ukrainians would be proud to be seen in.'
Bevza's appeal has spread far beyond Ukraine. Before the pandemic it was stocked in Bergdorf Goodman's in New York, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols in London. These days, along with many independent labels, she prefers to sell direct to customers via her own website, although she still sells through some smaller boutiques in the US and shows during New York Fashion Week.
Life can't be easy. She left a large house and garden with a swimming pool behind. Last August, her husband, Volodymyr Omelyan, the former minister of infrastructure of Ukraine, was injured in the knee while serving in the Ukrainian army. He mainly sees his wife and children on Skype. He's currently recuperating in Kyiv, but despite being 45, expects to be redeployed on the front line once he's recovered. None of this would you glean from her outward, impeccable composure. 'That's the thing about Ukrainians,' she says. 'Like anyone, we can get complacent, but when things get really tough, we fight – and go shopping and get our nails done. You should see the spas in Kiiv. They're packed out.'