Showing in Paris for the first time tomorrow, the visionary young designer is set to shake up the city's institutional system. In anticipation of the show, he’ll be taking over our Instagram for the day with images from his prolific archive, taken on the front lines of Moscow youth subculture. See below for an expanded, curated gallery.
Taken from the summer issue of Dazed:
Gosha Rubchinskiy, the Russian designer and photographer, met 19-year-old DJ Zhit Vredno last summer amid the dirt, sweat and glorious techno of an underground rave in Moscow. Bonding with Vredno over their mutual love of dance music subcultures, Rubchinskiy enlisted him to create a mix that captured the spirit of his SS14 collection. Inspired by the hedonistic 90s rave scene that pre-dated his own birth, Vredno (born Nikita Minin; his assumed name translates as “harmful to live”) revived the sounds of LFO and Ceephax Acid Crew, appropriating the British electronic pioneers’ work for a whole new generation of post-Soviet Russian youth. The pair have been raving it up ever since...
DJ ZHIT VREDNO
“The first rave I ran in Moscow was in a small bar, but it had the feeling of a shitload of people. My friends said it was great, so I was brave enough to run another one in a hanger in the north of Moscow. The owner wanted to shoot me after this party – people were smoking weed in the toilets, they weren’t paying entry and they weren’t buying booze because they were high as fuck! It was the craziest rave I’ve ever been to. I was born in 1994 and more than half of the tracks in the mixtape I made for Gosha were older than me. With all the kinds of music around that you can source from Tumblr and all that stuff, I respect early techno, gabber and hardcore more now because it has history. It’s like words from the father or mother you have listened to and respected your whole life.”
GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY
“Moscow in the 1990s was a crazy time. Guys would rent big spaces in old Soviet buildings, there were international DJs, people started using MDMA – it was a new kind of freedom for that generation. I like young people’s energy. For them it’s all about music subcultures. When you’re a teenager you want to be a part of a community. All of my friends are skateboarders and music is their main art – these guys make their own sounds on GarageBand and their lives revolve around music. Music gives freedom. Young people in my generation and the previous generation felt isolated, and we still feel disconnected to popular culture. The new generation has the internet and they feel like a part of something bigger; they want to be the voice of their people and spread the word that they are creative and can make cool music and art. This movement keeps growing. It’s a new Russia.”
Zhit wears printed jumper by Gosha Rubchinskiy; cotton shirt worn underneath by Penfield; cap by Fred Perry. Gosha wears printed jumper by Gosha Rubchinskiy; shirt worn underneath by Comme des Garçons Shirt; cap Gosha’s own
