Lucid Dreaming In London And Kyiv With Tamar Keburia

There are times and places when apparel is more than fashion, when the total is more than the sum of its parts. Fashion can be an art, and contrary to what some might believe, haute couture status is not a prerequisite for this idea to be true. If you need an example, see the Spring/Summer 2025 collection from TAMAR KEBURIA.

Clothing is in many ways communication, be it conscious or otherwise, and the designer who approaches their work with reverence often produces collections that speak more clearly than language is capable of. In the Venn diagram showing the places where apparel overlap, there is a sliver where the two are the same thing. Speaking to Tamar Keburia about her latest collection, and her body of work more generally, feels like winning a visa to that vesica piscis, a place I’m certain I want to live.

In February of this year, Tamar Keburia showed a collection during London fashion week. Her eponymous brand, TAMAR KEBURIA, was founded in 2016. Keburia is not Ukrainian by birth, her family is from Georgia, she was born in a small city that is today called Abkhazia, which is where she spent much of her childhood. In 1992 war broke out; Keburia was about 12 years old. Russia backed North Caucasian militants and Abkhaz separatist forces, it got dangerous and ugly. But Ukraine sent ships to help get civilians out of the war zone. “Actually,” she told me, “Ukraine was the only country who helped the Georgian people.”

I learned that there were two ways Georgians got out. Those who could not make it to the ships had to leave by land, passing over and through mountains to get to a border. It was important to her, Keburia told me, that people understand that because of this help, Ukraine was important to her long before it officially became her home. “I felt love towards these people,” Keburia told me. “I also felt that I wanted to do something for them, you know, like the way they did for our family at the same time. When we were refugees.”

Keburia’s family moved to Kyiv in 1994. She attended a Ukrainian university, made Ukrainian friends and married a Ukrainian man. A few weeks ago, Keburia told me, she was traveling for work and someone asked her when she had last been home. “You know,” she told me, “I don’t have a homeland, I don’t have a home.” She stopped for a moment and I swear I saw strength in Keburia’s eyes. “And then,” she continued, “I was like, ‘Oh, come on, come on!’ I have two homes, Georgia and Ukraine. I have two homes.”

Between 1994 and today is 30 years, a long time. “We were trying to forget everything that happened,” Keburia explained. “There was no social media like now. Everyone knew what it was like when the Soviet Union collapsed; the Russian Federation wanted to keep everyone under one roof. We always knew what happened, but we never knew it would happen with Ukraine. We didn’t believe it until this morning on February 24, when my mom came in and said ‘okay, it started.’ Even though we’ve been through this, we couldn’t believe that it could happen again, and especially not to Ukraine.”

When one country is under attack by another, there are many degrees of what ‘OK’ can mean. I wonder sometimes how many people remember how easily danger can become a gradient. “We were fortunate,” Keburia told me, “the second time we were not in the really scary situations like the people who lived in Donetsk, Mariupol or other areas. But for us, trying to adjust to the situation, trying to trust what you can. Don’t worry about your life and the life of your family. It took so many years, and then, like in one day, it again kind of crashed, collapsed, and I took my mother and my daughter. She was then 8, she’s now 10, we left, and we have been living in London for two years and a couple of months.”

These days, Keburia lives what she called “a two country life.” She travels home to Ukraine as often as she can. Her business is there, as are her friends and family. At first, it seemed like there might be a chance that the conflict arising out of Russia’s invasion would come to a quick end. But now, with 2024 coming to a close, it will soon be the third anniversary of the invasion. If you start the clock at the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, 2014, February will be the 11th year of Ukraine facing extreme Russian aggression. “To be honest,” Keburia told me, “I thought it would end last year but it’s not. And now I see that it’s not going to end this year, not really sure that it will end next year. It’s really not easy. I think creativity is the only thing that keeps giving me energy, it helps me to keep going. And yeah, I can’t imagine how anything would happen if I didn’t have a way to express myself. I have design rules.”

Looking over her body of work, it is obvious that Keburia has an affinity for black, though she does some pretty magical things with red or turquoise. “I somehow can’t work with color,” she told me. “Because I really love black, and it comes from deep in my childhood.” Keburia’s family is from Western Georgia, a traditional culture, where people wear a lot of black. “I remember Georgian funerals in the village where my father was from,” she told me. “They were almost like a fashion show, I would say, because everyone was always dressed so beautifully, showing respect for the occasion. That’s why black for me is always essential. It’s basically showing respect to a person and I really think it’s very beautiful. I use colors, but you know, 5%. Sometimes red, but I really like something that’s not distracting you from the core. From what’s important. And for me, the person is more important.”

TAMAR KEBURIA is not a mega-brand. The team is six people, half of whom continue to live in Ukraine. “The rest are in different countries,” Keburia explained. They work through Zoom a lot, which she views as a strength due to the opportunities which can sometimes appear without the tether of home. Still, Keburia wants this part to be over. Among many other legitimate reasons, Keburia told me, “I think it’s also very important for others to know that we are only associated with the war.” Understandably, she would prefer for the image of her country to be dissociated from images of war, from the idea of citizens forced into bomb shelters.

She thinks a lot about perception, its connections to the idea of identity, respect and gender. I’m not certain what her threshold is exactly, but at some point Tamar Keburia begins to work. Takes the thoughts, ideas and experiences and then weaves all of that together. Work can feel like play when it’s good work done well by someone who knows what they’re doing. That was the impression I was left with. I can’t see her extruding a single fiber, if that makes any sense. “I’m not making very simple garments,” Keburia told me. “They’re all really complex. But they do not take your attention from the person.” To this writer, it makes sense that complicated circumstances might lead to designs along the same lines, but this work is more than that. It gives a sense of elevation, not chaos.

For now, London is home for Keburia. “We don’t have sirens here, thank God, no bombing, nothing. Then I will go to Ukraine and see it.” Back in Kyiv, the studios of TAMAR KEBURIA are near a small park, there’s a little courtyard with a place to buy coffee. She remembers sitting there when sirens went off earlier in the war, a warning for citizens to seek cover, remembers rushing with the people she used to see in person every day to a bomb shelter. “But now,” she told me, “after all these years, I think people intentionally, maybe subconsciously, start taking risk. They live. Their day is not the last one. I don’t know how to say it.” Artists are people who digest ideas like the one above and turn it into something, they convince you to engage, they start a dialogue.

I think it is important to think about the work Ukrainian designers are making under wartime conditions. From LITKOVSKA to GASANOVA and beyond, there is so much beautiful work. Work that deserves more attention. And no matter the circumstances, no matter what has happened, I am always impressed by the capacity for fortitude that I witness in these conversations. Conversations, let me be very clear, that I feel privileged to have. “The more I live the more I understand that empathy is so important,” Keburia told me. “I mean, we are all human, it does not matter that we speak different languages, live in different places. We are happy about the same things, and we are disappointed or upset about the same things, and we all want to be happy and to live in peace, and not to worry about what will happen tomorrow, or even in one hour.”

With a new year about to arrive, of course she is thinking about the future. For herself, her family, her brand and for her nation. Throughout everything, the work helps, the artist needs to work, it is a cathartic thing to create beauty with one’s hands. “I’m trying to express my creativity,” Keburia told me. “I try to find new shapes and new life for all of this fabric and the garments, still, every season, I’m searching for something new, and next season I will continue.”

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