I spotted this stunning picture of my friend Tatiana Sorokko wearing one of her own rare, 1920s beaded flapper gowns at the Fall 2012 Ulyana Sergeenko show. Tatiana is the original Russian supermodel and is an avid haute couture collector and fashion journalist. In the nineties, Tatiana modeled on the haute couture runways for Dior, Givenchy, Chanel, Lanvin, YSL and many many more. She catapulted to fame and was the first international superstar to come out of Russia post-Soviet. Since then she has worked for some of the top magazine in the world as both a stylist and journalist and has landed on the International Best Dressed lists several times over — and rightly so! More importantly she is smart as a whip and has an encyclopedic knowledge of fashion and history!
She is really one of the most amazing women I have ever had the pleasure to know. In the picture above she is wearing one of her 1920s pieces that is actually from her very own Museum exhibit "Extending the Runway" that features about 60 pieces of her vast collection of Vintage Couture and Haute Couture. The exhibit originally showed in Moscow and then debuted in the US in Phoenix. It is perhaps a little premature to tell you this but Tatiana and I are currently working together to potentially bring it here to Toronto! Wouldn't that be amazing?
If that does end up being a reality, I will definitely share more with you about the breadth and scope of her collection and really be able to give you an insider's view, but for now what I want to convey to you this. Here is this fabulous woman who has this amazing, world class collection that she has painstakingly acquired over years and years of collecting. She is smart, she is funny, she is beautiful. She travels the world and has the kind of life most of us dream to have. She has a collection that is strong and compelling enough to garner it's own museum exhibit and yet here she is at a show and she has pulled a piece from that collection and wears it. It is not treated as precious, it is not revered and kept tucked away. She loves her pieces and she wears them. She celebrates them and brings them to life again. I absolutely love that about her. I know many, many collectors who have the most stunning things and they are tucked away in expensive closets like little forgotten children. Catalogued and then forgotten as new pieces are acquired. Not so for Tatiana. Her collection is an authentic and constant reflection of her. It is an extension of her as a person and she truly loves each piece in it's own right.
I absolutely adore her and am so happy so share her with you today!
photo: Harper's Bazaar