N by Z

The sixth edition of Belarus Fashion Week, the exhibit platform for the most talented designers in the area of Belaurs, has hosted the FW ’13 collection of one of the most promising talents form Russia, named Natalia Zlodyreva, whose brand, N by Z, has made a trio of apparently conflicting priorities the trait d’uniòn of all her collections.

The brand conception itself is a declared wish to create clothes to be worn by women with a strong propensity to feel free, unwilling to choose among comfort, beauty and elegancy: with N by Z clothes this choice is truly not necessary, since they embrace all these three features.

FW ’13 collection has been the purest confirmation of this statement: every garment is a celebration of lightness of materials, exacerbated by flight-recalling patterns, and morbidity of shapes. Soft jersey dresses are made up in no rigid frames, which adapt to any kind of silhouette, and delightful prints well respect the name of the collection, “Over The City”: actually all patterns represent sky multiples airships which are flying. This time lightness is not only “hidden” in fabrics, through a careful study of materials aimed at reaching stylish comfort, but it is massively repeated on fabrics themselves.

This formula works well for both day and night, since elegance is given to outfits thanks to wise combinations of light pastel colors: light green, soft yellow, pale blue are the main tonalities seen on this collection, which recall bon ton clothing style of early eighties, especially for the wide usage of pastel-colored transparent tights, which have almost disappeared from catwalks in the latest years, an oldie/goldie item that annihilates any daring trait of each garment and makes every outfit comfortably romantic and innocent.

N by Z FW ’13 is a modern metropolitan collection. Nevertheless, all its distinctive traits make it a definite departure from the well-known “metropolitan aggressiveness” we have become so used to.

Eleonora Sagretti

BELARUS AW 2013/14