For the full experience, listen to “My Little Winter (Slowed)” by Willix.

This is neither a concept nor a story created for a collection.

It’s a part of my life. A part of growing up. And, perhaps, the moment when I was born as a

designer.

I was forced to leave my home when russia waged war on my country.

I was thirteen.

Germany. A foreign country. A foreign city. A social housing complex.

Nothing but my family and a small suitcase with me.

That, and a deep void inside of me.

I couldn’t understand why my life had suddenly become this.

Why was I here? Why was I sleeping on the floor in a country I had never even imagined

living in? Why were my friends gone? Why everything that had once felt permanent and

familiar could disappear overnight.

And the simplest question Why? -became the hardest one to live with, because there

was no answer.

I was thirteen, left almost entirely alone with my thoughts.

With fear.

With confusion.

With anger.

With a sense of complete hopelessness.

In the end, I never found an answer to the question,

“Why did this happen to me?”

But I found something else.

I found clothes.

I didn’t start making clothes because I wanted to build a brand. I wasn’t thinking about

fashion as a business. I didn’t even think of myself as a designer yet.

I was just looking for somewhere to put everything I was carrying inside me.

Clothing became a way of saying something when I didn’t know how to speak about it.

A way to take fear, anger, loneliness, and confusion and turn them into something tangible.

Fabric.

Shape.Print.

A seam.

A detail.

Maybe that was what kept me from completely losing myself to depression, self-destruction,

and drugs.

And I’m grateful for that.

But SOCIAL HOUSE is not just about me.

It’s a portrait of a small society that happened to exist under one roof.

Completely different people.

Different lives.

Different generations.

Different kinds of pain.

I watched grandmothers who had lived in Germany for decades, relied on the welfare

system, and made full use of everything it had to offer -while still speaking about the

Soviet Union with genuine warmth.

I saw people hurt others, steal, and destroy lives, only to explain their actions through their

past, their circumstances, their faith.

I saw mothers and sons whose love had become so entangled with control that it was

difficult to tell where protection ended and the destruction of someone's independence

began.

I saw teenagers for whom drugs had simply become a part of everyday life. No one seemed

shocked anymore.

As if this was normal.

As if this was just how life was.

As if everyone was simply trying to survive in whatever way they knew how.

And that was what stayed with me the most.

The social housing complex became a miniature version of society.

A place where love existed alongside violence.

Faith alongside hypocrisy.

Care alongside control.

Addiction alongside loneliness.

Gratitude alongside hatred.

People who had lost themselves were trying to teach other lost people how to live.

And I was one of them.I watched.

I listened.

I remembered.

I grew up.

That’s why nothing in SOCIAL HOUSE is accidental.

Every colour, every print, every silhouette, every seam, every small detail comes from

somewhere.

All of these are filled with memories.

They are the people I saw.

The conversations I heard through the walls.

The things I experienced but couldn’t always understand at thirteen — things that stayed

somewhere inside me.

Only now do I understand how deeply that place shaped the way I see people, clothing, and

the world around me.

In a way, my design language was born there.

Not in fashion school.

Not on a runway.

Not from moodboards or references.

But in a social housing complex in Germany, where a thirteen-year-old boy ended up

because a war had forced him to leave his home.

SOCIAL HOUSE is a house of lost thoughts, disturbing memories, and big ideas.

A place I never wanted to call home.

But a place that, perhaps, made me into the person and the designer I am today.