Spring

Svitlana Bevza, the Ukrainian designer of the label Bevza, had the work of early 20th century artist Kazimir Malevich on her mind. Malevich was revered for his avant garde abstract art focusing on the purity of the square, before in later years turning to more figurative abstractions, like his 1932 painting of young women in a wheat field. (Contrary to popular belief, or indeed my college art history classes, Malevich was a Kyiv-born Ukrainian—not Russian.) Bevza is certainly a bit of an abstract figurist herself, and her work draws on the purity of the same line and shape, and none more so than her chic, meditative, graphically linear Spring 2026 collection. It was shown at a sun-filled industrial building in West Chelsea, the starkness of her palette of whites and blacks contrasting with searing carrot red, deep navy and the softest, butteriest yellow.

“Malevich was a father of modernism,” said Bevza. “He utilized the square, and that’s where I started with when cutting this collection. It’s a very stable shape, but it doesn’t look aggressive on the body because it’s the wearer and their personality who shapes any fabric.” She certainly manipulated her crepes, bamboo jerseys, and dense cottons well. There was an inventive and accomplished zippered square top/skirt (it can be worn either way, and is a rare example of so many designers’ obsession this NYFW with placing square flat volumes on a woman’s body—and it actually working); fluid jersey dresses with such rigor to the control of the fabric (as good as Hussein Chalayan’s from back in the day, and I absolutely mean that as a huge compliment); and geometric-collared shirts worn with long cuboid-panniered skirts.

Of course, that span of Malevich’s art—the futurism of geometry to the very cerebral sentimentality of his latter work—is also indicative of the bigger picture of Bevza’s life, which she has, because of the war on Ukraine, being living in London since 2023 with her children and also more recently her husband, and you could feel that arc in this collection. It had the idea of the power of creating, and the connection one feels to the landscape of one’s homeland.

The wheatsheaf has long been associated with Ukraine, and Bevza’s jewelry has used it as a leitmotif, adopted as a symbol by the Ukrainian diaspora as a mark of solidarity and remembrance. This season, Bevza coated it in white as a single strand necklace, or more showily, as a face mask. She can tell you in the most humbling terms about the challenges of her team in Ukraine continuing to work and create and commune together, and by extension, how making fashion can be an exercise in dignity and defiance. So much so that she will open her first ever store in Kyiv later this year. For any designer working for nearly 20 years, that’s a landmark moment, but for Bevza and her team, who are going through unimaginable daily challenges, it’s nothing less than an absolute triumph.