1920s vs 2020s: Fashion in the Surreal Loop

5 hours ago

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1920s vs 2020s: Fashion in the Surreal Loop is a fashion editorial photographed by Vitaly Artemiev with model Elizaveta Leukhina, published in the printed edition MALVIE Effortless Chic 161. In the photographer's words: "This editorial is a visual dialogue between two decades separated by a hundred years — the Roaring Twenties and the fashion of 2026, which openly borrows their silhouettes, sequins and pearls. Our lady is a modern flapper: bold, free, unapologetic — she smokes flowers instead of cigarettes and walks Minnie Mouse on a string of pearls, the very cartoon icon born in that same decade. Drawing on the surrealist spirit of the 1920s — real objects placed against all logic — we let the story slip from a candlelit midnight boudoir into a pastel morning, and back again. Fashion, like the twenties themselves, always returns."

From the printed edition: MALVIE Effortless Chic 161

1920s vs 2020s: Fashion in the Surreal Loop is one of the editorials in MALVIE Effortless Chic 161, the new printed edition of MALVIE Magazine, alongside The Melancholy of Time, Baroque Dreams, Off the Grid and Epoch of Aura.

The printed edition will be available to order from our print partners MagCloud, Peecho and DPBee.

About 1920s vs 2020s

1920s vs 2020s opens at midnight in a dark room of black panelled walls, gilded mirrors, a crystal chandelier, candelabra and a black marble bust. Elizaveta Leukhina wears a dusty-pink satin slip dress trimmed with black lace, a jewelled headband, long ropes of pearls, black lace gloves and a dark fur stole, and holds a small sprig of flowers to her lips like a cigarette.

Vitaly Artemiev then moves the story into a pastel morning: a cream bedroom with a white carved bed, a clawfoot bathtub and a pink velvet stool. Now in a headpiece with a tulle bow and lace gloves, she raises a glass, holds the shower over the bath and walks a plush Minnie Mouse on a string of pearls, before the last frame returns her to the dark room. Witty and nostalgic, it plays a century of style against itself.