Meet Russian fashion superstar Gosha Rubchinskiy

There’s a peculiar idea in the West that Russia is a backwards country, its citizens trailing us voguish Londoners by years, decades even.

What rubbish. First man in space? Russian.

The major artistic revolutions of the 20th century, Stravinsky’s wild dances, Malevich’s Black Square? Russian. Vladimir Putin was way ahead of Donald Trump with the whole fake news/ethno-nationalist stuff. And who sensed that the time was right to rescue the Burberry camel check from early Noughties ignominy? No, not the brand’s outgoing creative director, Christopher Bailey. It was Gosha Rubchinskiy. Russian.

‘It happened first of all because of St Petersburg,’ explains the designer/photographer/‘image-maker’ when we meet in Paris. Over the past few years, Rubchinskiy, 33, has become the most talked-about name in men’s fashion thanks to his Cyrillic slogans, constructivist singlets and distinctly Russian brand of urban pride. Back in June he was collaborating with Adidas ahead of next year’s World Cup in Russia, putting on three different shows in three different host cities.

St Petersburg was where football was first played in the country, thanks to 19th-century British travellers. And that set Rubchinskiy thinking. ‘I thought we needed to have a British brand there, something that is iconic and at the same time connected with football culture. In the late Eighties and Nineties, Burberry was such a strong look for football fans. So I asked Christopher if he could participate.’ And he did. Rubchinskiy sent a series of lean young Slavs parading down the catwalks in head-to-toe Burberry check, with a few defamiliarising details: smart shoes with sports socks, daringly high waistbands.

He celebrated by inviting the fashion crowd to Griboedov, a fierce electro club in an old bomb shelter left over from the siege of Leningrad. A few months later, Bailey was officially decontaminating the Burberry check at London Fashion Week, spawning a thousand fashion think-pieces about Nu Lads and cultural appropriation. But really it was Rubchinskiy’s idea. ‘It’s good not to sit in one period,’ he says. ‘Time changes. Yesterday it was ugly and not cool. Today it’s cool and beautiful. A new generation grows and they want to wear this check — that’s why I feel this is the right moment to do it again.’

I meet Rubchinskiy in a small attic room at the headquarters of Comme des Garçons in Place Vendome. He is based in Moscow but has had a presence here since 2012 thanks to a unique patronage deal with Comme CEO, Adrian Joffe. We are surrounded by rails of his signature singlets and T-shirts bearing his Cyrillic ‘PACCBET’ logo (pronounced rassvet, meaning ‘dawn’), which had drawn a die-hard following at his concession at Dover Street Market in London. Rubchinskiy is part of the same post-Soviet wave as Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia of Vetements and Balenciaga, and Vladivostok-born ‘bad taste’ stylist Lotta Volkova. It was Rubchinskiy who modelled the £195 DHL T-shirt that became a cult item for Vetements back in 2015. But he has always known which way the winds were blowing. At his debut show in 2008 he was asked what the fashion of the future would be. He responded: ‘I am the future. In 10 years, everyone will be talking about Gosha.’ And here we are.

Considering his designs are so evocative of the shaven-headed hooligans I used to cross Nevsky Prospekt to avoid when I was a student in St Petersburg, I had been expecting Rubchinskiy to be a bit combative. In fact, he is shy and soulful, with soft stubble, suede head, almost blending away in a black hoodie and blue Levi’s jacket. But there is no mistaking his self-assurance. ‘To be Russian is now to be part of the world,’ he says. ‘Before, we were separated. Now a mission of my generation and the younger generation is to be together with everyone else. That’s why it’s important for me to share some culture and some things which are important to me from my teenage years.’

He was born in 1984 (a signature sweater of his celebrates that year) and retains only the vaguest memories of the USSR. He was walking in the park near his flat with his father, a fire inspector, and their hunting dog when the news arrived that communism in Russia was over. ‘My father was listening to the fall of the government on his transistor radio. And yet at the same time we were in the park having a normal day. It was a crazy, crazy time straight after that. It was not step by step, it was like: BANG.’

After the Cold War, Western bankers and politicians imposed what they called ‘capitalist shock therapy’ on the former Soviet Union. Everything that had been controlled became available all at once. And it was this anarchic, fluorescent free-for-all that formed Rubchinskiy’s tastes. ‘People were thirsty and then they were able to try many, many things. They were drunk from freedom. It was a great moment. Some girls wanted to put on all the make-up at the same time: Dior, Chanel, Versace, all at once.’ Meanwhile vast markets popped up selling cheap, pirated tapes and CDs — ‘You could get the Radiohead album weeks before it was released!’ — along with fashion knock-offs galore.

For all that he was drawn to eccentrics and outcasts, Rubchinskiy describes himself as a reserved teenager. ‘I mainly sat at home and did drawings. Or my mother would take me to museums — my friend was my mother,’ he laughs. (When I ask if he has a partner, he laughs and says no. ‘I see my mother sometimes.’) These were desperate and uncertain economic times. ‘There was no work for my parents. And for us as teenagers, we wanted to be able to have some cool music or magazines or clothing, so we’d share it. One of my friends would buy an album, one of us a magazine and one of us a book and we’d have it for a week each and then change.’ It informs his approach to this day. ‘Sometimes when you don’t have things but you want them, you find an interesting way to create them. I miss this time. It’s why every time I do a new project or collection I try to remember how it was to be a teenager at that time.’

His interest in clothes was secondary to his interest in creativity in general, though he does remember parading around in cowboy boots and home-made leather flares at school. Mostly, he drew inspiration from anarchic self-published magazines such as Ptyuch and Om. ‘It was a mix of club culture, crazy fashion shoots, some art, cinema, music altogether. I was not inspired by fashion but by that world of crazy creativity. When I saw it, I realised I wanted to be one of these kinds of people.’

His early shows post art school were synonymous with a Russian cultural type known as gopnik — roughly equivalent to the English ‘chav’. (I’m pretty sure that’s where the whole Adidas sliders-with-white-socks thing originated.) But he finds the term borderline offensive now. ‘A gopnik is like a country boy who doesn’t have any money so wears only what he can find in his local store and mixes it with no style. Adidas sneakers with a smart suit. Leather shoes with tracksuit.’ A few Moscow skaters began incorporating this into their look, and he took notice. ‘But I’m more into teenagers and skaters who like to experiment with their style. I think it’s best to call it the Gosha look.’

The Gosha look is ever-shifting. He professes himself uninterested in high fashion and concentrates on the project in front of him: first a collaboration with Burberry; then with 1990s sportswear brand Fil; then with Russian rock band Mumiy Troll. But he falls back on the Moscow skate scene. ‘Skating unites people. You find crazy rich kids and poor street kids and they’re all wearing the same stuff. I like that. Some will like rock, some will like hip-hop, but they party all together. It’s good when people from different worlds meet each other. This is the Gosha look.’ He tries to keep his prices relatively affordable to remain in reach of his young fans: £55 for a T-shirt, say, £155 for a hoodie — a fraction of what Vetements charges.

If you mention anything like Putin or hacking, he doesn’t look uncomfortable so much as bored. He is adamant he carries no political message, but he does hope to show that Russia is as much part of the 21st century globalised world as anywhere else. ‘Politics separates people. Artists, musicians, fashion people have a chance to keep people together. That’s why it’s important for me to do shows in Russia and invite people there. We need to have this kind of cultural exchange.’