In clothing, but also a meaningful experience.
Briiskie founder and designer Iryna Steller’s Fruits and Flowers collection is all made with unexpected, natural materials. Though the shop has been open for two years, this sustainable rebrand is relatively new—the collection rejects the traditional seasonal format and stems from Steller’s near-encyclopedic (and largely self-taught) knowledge of technical fashion design and natural materials. “I opened the door to an enchanting world of alternative materials,” she says. “Briiskie now isn’t just about garments, it’s something more philosophical and that has more legacy to it.”
Steller first honed her skills in the film industry, working for a fast-paced costume department. It was during a 2019 show-wrap in which she was asked to dispose of unused materials that she had a life-altering epiphany about fashion industry waste—and then sought to find an alternative to the status quo.
The designer’s search for cruelty-free, plant-based materials yields a list worthy of a still-life painting: orange peels, rose petals, eucalyptus, corn and lotus root, to name a few. The orange peel satin, made from the peel’s cellulose extract and spun into fibres, has a rich weight to it and even maintains nourishing vitamin C traces. Such experimental fabrics take patience to master. “I get inspiration after I start talking to the material,” Steller says of her process. “When you work with sustainable materials, they will tell you what to make from them.”
(photos) Mondegreen Studio and Olena Shebanits; (models) Oksana MatvEeva, Erin Kingston and Angelina Kotova
