QCEG MAG EDITORIAL ALEXANDRA ZHUKOVA ON CRAFT, MEMORY AND MAGICAL REALISM SPRING/SUMMER 27 · PLAY ACT II
There is a particular sort of garment that behaves like a costume but lives like a favourite jumper — the kind you reach for on an ordinary Tuesday, only to find you are standing a little taller in it. Alexandra Zhukova has spent her career working in that narrow, charged space. Her work explores the subtle spillovers of emotion and fantasy within daily life, where innocent, personal, playful and romantic details emerge not through decoration but through practical garment construction.
The result is clothing that rediscovers a forgotten sense of the fantastical and mythical within the everyday — a space the designer describes, without fuss, as magical realism.
“The pieces should feel special enough to make you feel transformed, but still be wearable.”
- said ALEXANDRA ZHUKOVA
NOT COSTUMES, BUT CHARACTERS
The distinction matters. Zhukova is not in the business of dressing people for a performance; she is in the business of dressing them for the morning. The ambition is modest and quietly radical at the same time: to make the ordinary act of getting dressed carry a little more weight, a little more feeling.
"The pieces should feel special enough to make you feel transformed, but still be wearable," she says. "They're designed to make people feel confident, expressive and just a little more like the main character in their own story. They add a sense of magic, playfulness and emotion to something as ordinary as getting dressed in the morning."
It is a delicate balance, and one that most brands get wrong in one direction or the other — either so theatrical that the clothes never leave the wardrobe, or so restrained that nothing about them lingers. Zhukova's answer is craft.
CRAFT AS THE SITE OF FEELING
Construction is where the emotion lives. Through creative pattern-cutting and a genuine research into novel shapes, the work resolves the central tension of the brand: garments that feel distinct, personal and emotionally charged, while remaining functional and comfortable enough for real life.
The pieces are carefully pattern-cut and built to create sculptural silhouettes that still fit beautifully and are genuinely enjoyable to wear. Nothing is sculptural at the expense of the body inside it. Material choice follows the same logic. Natural fibres are central to the house, on the premise that luxury comes from two things in equal measure: the way a garment is made, and the way it feels against the skin.
REMEMBERING BADLY, ON PURPOSE
For Spring/Summer 27, Zhukova has turned that philosophy inward. Play Act II takes as its starting point a simple, unsettling idea about how memory works: when we remember an experience, we are not returning to the original. We are returning to our most recent recollection of it. Each act of remembering carries forward earlier distortions and introduces new ones, gradually changing our relationship to the thing we think we know.
The collection translates that process directly into construction. It is conceived as a misremembering of the previous collection — and the garments wear that misremembering openly. Existing patterns are reused and misplaced. Proportions shift. Details are exaggerated or omitted entirely. Familiar elements turn up in unexpected positions, as though assembled by someone working from a hazy description rather than the original.
Crucially, the earlier collection remains recognisable within these altered forms. Its structures are still legible, but rearranged through the logic of an imperfect recollection — the sartorial equivalent of a familiar room in which the furniture has been quietly moved.
THE COLLECTION EXAMINES HOW THE PRESENT CONTINUALLY RESHAPES THE PAST — MAKING THE ATTEMPT TO RECOVER AN EARLIER FORM THE STARTING POINT FOR SOMETHING NEW.
A HOUSE OF MINOR ARTS
Zhukova's world extends well beyond the rail. The brand collaborates with performers and dancers for its shows, and presents its pieces through installation and video as readily as through a conventional runway. The stated aim is to be known as a multidisciplinary creative house that combines several forms of minor arts — an ambition that gives the clothing a context rather than merely a season.
Taken as a whole, Alexandra Zhukova feels like a world of its own: poetic, fun, dark at times and a little ironic — but always with intention. It is a rare combination. Plenty of labels can do whimsy; fewer can do whimsy that has been pattern-cut, sampled in a natural fibre and finished properly.
That, in the end, is the argument Play Act II makes. Transformation does not require a costume. It requires a garment that has been thought about hard enough to feel like it means something — and then worn, casually, on an unremarkable morning, by someone who has decided, quietly, to be the main character.
With Play Act II now presented for Spring/Summer 27, QCEG MAG considers how Zhukova's practice — pattern-cutting as memory, construction as feeling, and the morning ritual as a stage — positions the house at a rare intersection of craft and fantasy.
