Maryna Ivanova Museum Mission — Returning Ukrainian Costume from the Periphery
The Maryna Ivanova Museum announces an updated mission — returning Ukrainian regional 19th-20th century costume from ethnographic periphery to the centre of European fashion narrative.
In September 2025 the Maryna Ivanova Museum announced an updated strategic mission for the next decade. The museum's founder — Maryna Ivanova, fashion historian and collector whose private collection over twenty years has become one of the fullest corpuses of Ukrainian regional costume outside state holdings. The collection covers the 19th-20th centuries — from peasant attire of Polissia and Podillia to burgher costume of Kyiv, Lviv, Chernivtsi, to workers' clothing of industrial cities of the 1920s.
The museum's mission: to bring Ukrainian costume out of the status of an ethnographic exhibit into a full participant in the global fashion conversation. The programme envisions three directions: deep regional research (expeditions to Polissia, Podillia, Prykarpattia, Slobozhanshchyna); a restoration workshop with its own school; a publishing programme in English language for entry into the international academic market. In 2026-2030 the museum plans exhibitions in Stockholm, Paris and New York.
