Solove: when vintage meets contemporary
Alice Bouju
Conversation with Silviya Solovyeva, co-founder and designer behind Solove
Solove is a design brand co-founded by designer Silviya Solovyeva. It brings together vintage aesthetics and contemporary silhouettes through a personal and intuitive approach to fashion. Built around form, texture, and storytelling, the brand creates collections that feel both nostalgic and modern. Solove balances architectural precision with emotional sensitivity. The brand treats clothing not as disposable products but as carefully constructed objects with their own identity and atmosphere.
For Solove, every collection begins differently. Sometimes it starts from “the feel of a fabric or a certain silhouette” that becomes impossible to forget. Other times, it starts from a single construction that evolves and transforms throughout the entire collection. Even the smallest visual detail can eventually expand into a layered narrative and complete visual statement. What matters most is cohesion.
“My goal is always a cohesive world where every piece talks to the next.”
Building collections as complete visual worlds
This search for wholeness is central to Solove’s creative process. Rather than designing isolated garments, the brand approaches collections as immersive universes where every piece contributes to a larger emotional and visual story. “There’s not much point in creating beautiful pieces if they’re just isolated items,” Silviya explains.
“I’m always driven to build a complete story and a unified visual statement.”
The narrative itself rarely comes first in a literal sense. Instead, it emerges organically throughout the design process, through fragments of images, shapes, fabrics, and intuitions. Silviya describes the process as almost like extracting thoughts from the mind until the original vision fully reveals itself.
“Only when I feel like everything has been said do I consider the story finished.”
Between vintage references and contemporary energy
Although Solove’s work often carries traces of vintage references, the brand never approaches nostalgia as simple reproduction. Inspirations from the past are filtered through personal memories, instinct, and present-day energy.“The things we love and find inspiring usually settle deep inside us,” Silviya says.
“When I start creating, I tap into those memories but run them through my own lens and personal touch.”
This tension between past and present feels especially visible in the silhouettes. Sharp lines, geometric cuts, and structured forms give many garments a architectural quality. Solove approaches clothing primarily through “an artist’s lens,” focusing on composition, shape, and color more than conventional ideas of wearability or gender.
“I often think of a piece as a standalone design object, not always strictly tied to the human form.”
The duality of softness and structure
One of the strongest elements running through Solove’s collections is the constant dialogue between feminine and masculine energies. Rather than designing around gender categories, the brand focuses entirely on aesthetics, form, and visual emotion.
“It’s always about the idea, the shape, and the color, regardless of traditional boundaries.”
This balance also appears through fabric choices and texture combinations. Solove gravitates toward structured materials such as wool, while simultaneously drawing toward delicate textiles like silk, chiffon, and organza. Contrasts are essential to the construction of a piece: dense wool can meet transparent organza. Additionally, masculine tailoring can coexist with fragile detailing. Prints also play a major role in shaping the collections’ identity, from tartan and argyle to polka dots and houndstooth. Solove constantly mixes and reinterprets these prints in unexpected ways.
Music, memory, and the spirit of rebellion
Music also occupies an important place within Solove’s universe, even if indirectly. The first collection became strongly associated with punk, new wave, and alternative music scenes. This happened after Nikolay, the brand’s co-founder and a passionate music lover, recognized parallels between the finished garments and certain artists’ visual identities.
Pieces were eventually named after musicians such as Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sioux because their energy seemed naturally embedded within the clothes themselves. A short skirt with eyelets felt “both defiant and feminine,” evoking Debbie Harry. Meanwhile, a sharp geometric kilt-skirt immediately recalled the visual edge of Siouxsie Sioux.
That same relationship between memory and reinterpretation appears in Solove’s latest drop, “Moi Je joue,” inspired by 1960s France and the yé-yé era. Drawing from childhood memories of singing songs by Françoise Hardy and Sylvie Vartan in a French choir, the collection revisits the romantic innocence of the period. At the same time, it translates that inspiration into a more contemporary visual language. Rather than recreating the decade literally, Solove sought to preserve its recognizable spirit while modernizing the styling, silhouettes, and attitude.
“I just wanted to revisit that time, to “play” with it. That’s why I called the drop “Moi Je joue”. It’s a nostalgic way to engage with the clothes and enjoy that aesthetic all over again.”
Solove’s creative necessity for slowness
At the core of Solove lies a deliberate resistance to speed and overproduction. The brand develops collections slowly, without large teams or industrial production systems. Every design is handled personally before being produced in small batches.
For Silviya, time is not an obstacle but a necessary condition for creation. “I need the luxury of time to sit with an idea, let it breathe, and refine every little detail until I’m 100% happy with it.” She centres this slower process on a broader philosophy of intentionality and longevity. “I don’t believe in clothing for the sake of clothing,” Silviya explains.
“I’m all about the value of each individual piece and a more conscious, deliberate approach.”
That same philosophy also shapes the future of the brand. Rather than aggressively pursuing growth, Solove chooses to evolve carefully and independently. This protects the intimacy and intentionality of its creative process.
“No matter how we grow, our priority stays the same: to stay true to ourselves and our core values.”
Special thanks to Silviya Solovyeva, designer and co-founder of Solove, for taking the time to share her thoughts and answers.
Photography and styling: © Silviya Solovyeva
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Alice is a Paris based photograper with a passion for fashion. Based in Paris, she develops an approach that brings together photography and writing, often mixing the two within her projects.
Her work is deeply rooted in reality. She is particularly drawn to documentary practices, using images and text as complementary tools to observe, question, and reinterpret the world around her. Whether through visual series or written pieces, she seeks to capture fragments of the everyday and give them a new narrative dimension.
She has developed a strong interest in research and editorial work. Writing articles, exploring contexts, and building stories from real-life subjects naturally extend her creative process. This intersection between documentation and storytelling reflects a field she has long been eager to explore.
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