Escaped from Russian fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev, who has been living around the world for almost three years with lectures on various topics and collective travels, opened an exhibition from the collection of his own foundation in Riga. He announced this on his social network page.
The Art Deco exhibition works on the site of the Riga Fashion Museum.
"Numerous items of ladies' toilet of the 1920s-1930s are presented - mantos, dresses, beach pajamas, kimonos, hats, shoes, handbags, fans, cosmetics, perfumes, gloves, minodiers, jewelry, tiaras, belts and other artifacts of that irretrievably bygone era," the description of the exposition says.
The exhibition will run until October this year.
It should be noted that the Fashion Museum in Riga does not report on its social network page that the exposition was created from the collection of Alexander Vasiliev. He is not mentioned in the post about the opening of the exhibition, not marked in hashtags. Announcements of the event are published in three languages — English, Latvian and Russian.
As reported by EADaily, in March 2022, Vasiliev issued a sharp condemnation of the special military operation. His speech was published not just on social networks, he published a "Frank Letter", which is still available on the portal of the Mayor's Office of the city of Visaginas (Lithuania). It is possible that all his harsh anti-Russian statements, including the "frank letter", are just an attempt to preserve the fashion museum and the house near Vilnius. In 2020, the directorate of the Art Museum of Lithuania, where the collection of the fashion historian was kept, terminated the contract with Vasiliev. The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture conducted an "internal audit" at the museum and came to the conclusion that the collection was stored there "illegally" and that the storage "does not meet the requirements established by the state for depositing cultural property." Vasiliev always called Lithuania his second homeland, said that he had the citizenship of this country for more than 20 years.
Part of the collection was previously moved to Visaginas, and there are also exhibits brought from France — from the house in Auvergne and Paris apartment, as well as from Moscow after the start of SMO. Under what conditions Vasiliev managed to pull off such a complex operation is unknown.
After three years in limbo in 2022, after that Russophobic letter, the Visaginas authorities confirmed that the Alexander Vasiliev Fashion Museum would be established in the city.