Russia Spring 2018 Nina Donis...Fashionweekly..On Fow24news.com

Donis Pouppis and Nina Neretina’s Nina Donis label is legendary within the Russian fashion industry. The duo met in the late ’80s while in university for textiles and started their own line, which they officially launched in 2000....
The two went on to show at London Fashion Week for several seasons. Now, the pair splits their time between Pouppis’s childhood home of Cyprus and Moscow, where the brand has amassed a dedicated following. It’s stocked at popular concept stores like KM20 and Leform, as well as in Natasha Goldenberg’s corner of Moscow’s luxury department store Tsum.

As inspiration, they often look to Russian motifs, like Olympic uniforms and Russian traditional dress. In the knit-centric Fall lineup the designers showed this week, there were references to royalty across the continents, including a polka-dot blouse of a young Queen Elizabeth II translated into a nipped-at-the-waist dress and a skirtsuit worn by the astronaut Valentina Tereshkova reworked into a similar piece with a more modern silhouette.

Despite its local popularity, the label represents the fascinating difficulty of designing within Russia. Pouppis spoke at length about the ways in which the country’s bureaucracy can affect a simple task like sending fabric samples abroad, a seemingly tiny detail that can put the brakes on a label trying to gain an international audience. When asked if the duo would leave Moscow to expand Nina Donis, Pouppis noted that there’s something here that “pulls him.” Nonetheless, he said that one day he and Neretina may possibly permanently relocate.