Pirosmani at Russian Fashion Week March 2006

Pirosmani 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.

Pirosmani is one of the March 2006 bill's single-word label names, standing in the P run of the programme between Parfionova and the Princess and Frogs billing. The name is the label's whole public identity on the list, and the record keeps it exactly as the season printed it.

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

A Label's Turn on the Runway

A coined label name is a branding decision with a long tail. A designer's own name ties a label to a person; a single word floats free of any biography and lets the clothes carry the whole identity. The March 2006 bill holds both strategies in suspension, and the photograph records suit the coined names particularly well: with no life story attached to the record, the two published views of the show are the label's identity, exactly as its founders arranged for it to be.

Pirosmani's two photographs record the label's turn on the runway, in the run of the programme where the March 2006 bill is at its most varied: single names, labels and the approaching R and S names all within a few billings of each other.

A single-word name also asks something of its audience: recognition without explanation. There is no first name to search, no label word to translate — the word itself has to become familiar through the work, season by season. A fashion week archive supports exactly that process, because it fixes the name to a dated, placed, photographed appearance. After March 2006, Pirosmani is not just a word on a list; it is this show, these two published views, in this company.

Photos