The famous Russian fashion designer Vyacheslav (Slava) Zaïtsev, nicknamed the “Red Dior”, died Sunday at the age of 85, told AFP the spokeswoman for his fashion house in Moscow. At the beginning of March, when he “gathered his friends for his birthday, we could already see that he was very, very weak,” she said.
“Fashion designer Viatcheslav Zaïtsev has died. This year, he celebrated his 85th birthday”, lamented the Russian public channel Pervy Kanal, paying tribute to this man “who dictated Soviet and Russian fashion for decades, an innovator who was not afraid to audacious experiments.
Compared to a Soviet Christian Dior
The couturier, who created more than a thousand models during his career, had made himself known in the world with his dresses using the flamboyant patterns of the traditional shawls of his country.
“I can dress a whole parade on Red Square with my clothes…”, said Slava Zaïtsev in 2017 in an interview with AFP. In 1963, the French weekly Paris Match, then a major photo magazine, compared him to a Soviet Christian Dior.