LILIA LITKOVSKA “I feel like a messenger and a bridge between Kyiv and Paris.”

What does it mean to make fashion in a country at war for four years?

It means living inside a contradiction every day.

There are moments when survival feels like the only honest priority. And yet, in that same moment, you understand that beauty is not a luxury. It is oxygen.

To create in Ukraine now is to create with heightened senses. You hear silence differently. You feel cold differently. You understand fragility not as an idea, but as a physical presence.

Fashion, for me, is not about garments. It is about protecting the human inside the garment, giving them confidence and space for individuality. It is about insisting on tenderness when the world becomes brutal.

Every piece we create carries love. Light is stronger than darkness, even when it trembles.

How do you see yourself today?

I feel like a messenger and a bridge between Kyiv and Paris – between a city that wakes up to sirens and a city that wakes up to café terraces.

Life in Ukraine is very sharp now. Emotions are pure, undiluted. Love is absolute. Pain is absolute. This intensity lives inside my work. I cannot separate myself from it.

I am also a mother. A wife in a family divided by war. A woman trying to hold tenderness and responsibility at the same time.

I continue building our School of Design because young creators need a future to believe in. I support children who lost their parents and those who defend our freedom. These are not different identities, they are one pulse inside me.

 Do you have a particular theme for this collection presented in Paris?

The collection is called FIREFLY.

It was born from darkness.

There are nights in Kyiv without electricity, without heating, sometimes without water. People move through the city with small lights in their hands. From a distance, the streets look like a sky fallen onto the earth, scattered with tiny moving stars, fireflies.

That image became the soul of the collection.

It was created in extreme winter, minus 30 degrees. In ateliers that sometimes had no power. In rooms where breath was visible in the air.

But inside, there was warmth.

FIREFLY is about the inner light we protect. It is quiet. It does not scream. But it refuses to disappear. And that is what we bring to Paris: garments that carry warmth created against the cold.

What is the most urgent thing to say or do today?

Do not let your light go out.

Protect your values the way you would protect your home. Protect your freedom the way you would protect your child.

Ukraine is not only fighting for territory. It is fighting for dignity, for the right to live consciously and freely.

Support matters. Presence matters. Attention matters.

So that one morning, somewhere in Kyiv, a child wakes up and the first sound she hears is silence, peaceful silence.

 How do you work on a daily basis?

I am naturally structured. I love order. But war dissolves the illusion of control.

Production happens under constant uncertainty: sirens, blackouts, interrupted logistics. People are tired. Deeply tired. And still, we go on. 

I chose not to move production away from Ukraine. It is not only a practical decision. It is a moral one. My roots are there. My promises are there.

In Paris, my days are about building stability: strengthening partnerships, expanding the brand globally. We are now present in over 30 countries. Paris gives perspective and dialogue. Kyiv gives depth and truth.

Sometimes the collection arrives two days before the show, carried in personal luggage to compensate for disruptions and because delivery cannot be trusted. Behind every runway moment, there is invisible endurance.

 How has your way of working changed?

There is more contingency. More resilience.

Travel has become a ritual of endurance: 24 hours to reach Kyiv from Paris, long borders, no flights, constant recalculation.

You learn to work without comfort. To rest quickly. To create in fragments of time.

But something essential has become clearer. There is less noise inside me. Less desire to impress. More desire to be true.

 Constraints, shortages?

There are shortages of electricity, heating and predictable logistics.

There is no shortage of imagination. No shortage of courage. No shortage of love for life.

In Ukraine, you cannot isolate yourself from reality. You share the same cold, the same darkness, the same hope as everyone else.

This shared experience creates a powerful sense of fairness and belief: belief in people, in solidarity, in peace.

Hope: your greatest pride?

Absolutely! My country survived due to hope. Hope mobilises you. It gives you the sense of direction, when the road is invisible and it gives strength. The brand also survived due to hope. After fleeing with my daughter to Paris on the first day of war, I returned to Ukraine three weeks later and reassembled my team to continue living and creating.

When you see something made in Ukraine today, you are seeing more than a design. You are seeing choice: the choice to live fully, not halfway.

Your style, if you had to define it?

The LITKOVSKA woman is intellectually free.

She carries elegance with a quiet rebellion. She appreciates structure, but she leaves space for imperfection, for humanity.

There is always an intentional incompleteness in our garments, because I believe the final gesture belongs to the person who wears them. She completes the story.

She does not chase trends. She edits them. She listens to herself. She keeps what is true and releases what is empty.

Your mentors and inspirations?

I am inspired by people who carry inner light.

Socrates, for the courage to question.
Johann Sebastian Bach, for divine structure.
Jiddu Krishnamurti, for clarity.
Napoleon, for will.
Yohji Yamamoto and Martin Margiela, for redefining form.
Hieronymus Bosch, for depth of vision.
Róisín Murphy, for fearless individuality.
Isabelle Huppert, for strength within subtlety.

I admire those who understand that talent is not ownership; it is responsibility.

Your projects? Your most precious dream?

I want to grow our School of Design into an international platform, connecting Kyiv and Paris, giving young designers tools, confidence, and global visibility. I want their path to be less lonely than mine was.

I want LITKOVSKA to become one of defining voices in Paris Fashion Week.

Personally, my dream is very simple. To wake up in a peaceful Kyiv. And to hold my daughter without counting the hours.

What does Paris represent to you?

Paris is my second home.

Since 2013, when we opened our first showroom there, it has been a place of growth. In 2017, when the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode included us in the official Paris Fashion Week schedule, it felt like recognition – not a miracle, but the result of persistent work.

Paris is where the past and the future of fashion speak to each other.

Kyiv gives me the heartbeat. Paris gives me the echo.

And between these two cities, the story continues.

L.B. 

This interview has been lightly edited.