May 2023

Slava Zaitsev, an effervescent and enduring Soviet-era fashion designer, once called the “Red Dior” by the Western press, whose over-the-top theatrical creations and persona made him a go-to couturier at home, died on April 30 in Shchyolkovo, Russia. He was 85.

His longtime friend Tatiana Sorokko, a Russian-born model and journalist, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by internal bleeding that resulted from an ulcer.

Mr. Zaitsev died just two days before Valentin Yudashkin, a pupil of his who was also known for his sumptuous creations, and who found greater success in the West than he did, died of cancer at 59.

Mr. Zaitsev gave color, sparkle and opulence to a generation raised in drab Soviet gray, the uniform of the proletariat, by combining Western bling with nods to traditional Russian folk costumes and nostalgic references to Pasternak and Tolstoy. He was the first designer, in pre-perestroika days, to be allowed to put his name on his work, which he first did in 1982.

He would go on to design for pop stars, politicians, ballerinas and Olympic athletes. He designed uniforms for Aeroflot, the Russian airline, and for Moscow’s traffic police, whom he dressed in crisp navy blue with light-reflecting stripes.

He loved pomp and spectacle — for a time in the 1980s his fashion business was known as the Theater of Fashion — and he oversaw sold-out weekly shows like a circus maestro, dancing down the runway dressed in bright silks and waving his hands in the air.

“Don’t be afraid to look plump,” he told the audience at one show, The New York Times reported in 1986. “Russia has always been associated with plump women who embody kindheartedness, hospitality and good food.”

For most Russians during the Gorbachev years, fashion would remain a spectator sport. In