Parfionova at Russian Fashion Week March 2006

Parfionova showed at Russian Fashion Week in March 2006, in the designer showcase linked above. The record holds two runway photographs of the show, pictured by Maria Valentino, Firstview, and provided by Russian Fashion Week.

Billed in capitals on the March 2006 programme as PARFIONOVA, the name stands in the P run of the list, between the Pantene Hair Trend presentation and Pirosmani. It is a single-name billing — a designer's name presented as the label — in a programme that mixes those with coined brand words and partnerships.

Illustrative image created for this guide — an artistic impression, not photographs from this show.

A Single-Name Billing in the P Run

A designer's own name on a bill ties a label to a person; the whole identity of the presentation rests on that name and on the clothes. The photograph records suit such billings particularly well: with the presentation documented in two published views, the record keeps the show itself — the looks that walked — in front of any reader who wants to judge the season's billing directly.

Parfionova's pair of photographs is kept in the selection in which Russian Fashion Week published them, credited like all the others. Set among the neighbouring records, it forms part of the season's continuous portrait, each designer given the same stage and the same photographic witness.

Capital letters on a programme are a small thing, but programmes are read quickly, in foyers and press rows, and a name set in full capitals holds its line against a column of title-case neighbours. PARFIONOVA's billing shows the presentation understood that. The record beneath the billing is the standard March 2006 one — two Firstview photographs, the credit, the place in the list — and that standardisation is the counterweight to the branding: whatever a billing looks like, the archive treats its show the same.

Photos