The Ageless Fashion Illustration by Olena Mynenko
“I love fashion, fashion is like a quick sketch, and it resonates with my spirit.”
Olena Mynenko is a fine art fashion illustrator.
She studied Fine Arts from the University in Kiev, Ukraine. Earlier on, she saw that fine art to be too serious and too slow for her. But in fashion, she saw the beautiful possibility of offering people a beautiful illusion to make them feel better by bringing her sketch on their body. She moved to Barcelona to learn fashion–she started her first design job with the Spanish brand, Antonio Miro. However, after one collection, she found it challenging to stay inspired; the more professionally closer to the Fashion industry she got, the more she found herself distancing from her creative purpose.
For an artist, the most enjoyable part is the process of creation–inspiration, composition and construction, sketching, and reflection. Fashion creation lacked the values that Olena Mynenko prized as an artist. As a fashion designer, she made artistic compromises that drew Mynenko away from her initial idea–and further away.
“The collection is done, but I didn’t get to enjoy the result of my artistic creation, but instead, it is the apprehension of the successful buyer counts that worried my mind,” says Mynenko.
She was happy and confused at the same time as a fashion designer and was losing her orientations of how to start her next collection–lost sight on how to bring ideas from paper to the end and make them survive through all industrial and commercial adjustments. “I was loosing so many good ideas through the entire length of the process, with the occasional instance when I could not even realize some of the ideas because there wasn’t enough time.” And the other great ideas that survived lost their value in half a year (because it’s the end of the season!), added Mynenko.
The speed with which the ideas changed in the Fashion industry pushed Olena Mynenko away from her Fashion Designer career.
“Despite my [personal] frustrations, I love fashion– It is rich with surprises inciting a new mood with its constant change. The fashion sketches, however, are free from the fashion systems short life-cycle grief”. And it is in fashion sketches that Olena Mynenko finally found a balanced medium to express her artistic creation while still pursuing her love for fashion.
