The master of world fashion was 59 years old, in recent years he was seriously ill.
Valentin Yudashkin was a student of Zaitsev, he had undergraduate practice at the Moscow Fashion House.
“I remember how I came to study with him at the Fashion House on Prospekt Mir. It was simply unforgettable, every meeting and all the years spent next to him. There was a joint work, I attended his master classes, photo shoots. I could watch him create art and history, it’s worth a lot, ”the famous couturier recalled just a few days earlier, when he expressed his condolences to the family of his mentor and colleague.
You can only smoke in the boutique Pugacheva
The Yudashkin fashion house has existed since 1993, and this year it should celebrate its 30th anniversary. The fashion designer dressed 4 Russian Olympic teams – in 1993, 1996 and 1998, developed a new uniform for Aeroflot and a dress uniform for the Russian army. His collections are known all over the world, the master’s works were shown in Paris, Milan and New York.
It is known that Yudashkin preferred to talk to the press about fashion news and the latest trends in the industry, but not about his business. Financial issues were mainly decided by the partners of the famous couturier. The fashion house Valentin Yudashkin has been successful and prosperous all the years. The only publication that tried to study the business structure of a famous fashion designer was the RBC portal. In the 2018 article, it is presented in as much detail as possible.
Models from Yudashkin were worn by almost all Russian show business stars. According to RBC, the only client who was allowed to smoke in Yudashkin’s boutique was Alla Pugacheva. One of the singer’s dresses cost more than 200 thousand rubles.
But the Fashion House has never published sales data. It is known that the revenue of its main assets, Shanti and Dimax companies, through which sales are carried out, in 2016 amounted to a total of 84.9 million rubles, while net profit was several times higher – 682 million rubles.
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, both companies have been owned by Galina Yudashkina, the daughter of a fashion designer, since March 2022. In Shanti, her share is 99.6%, another 0.4% belongs to his wife Marina Yudashkina. The couturier himself left the company in 2016. The Dimax company was a subsidiary of Shanti, now it is 100% property of Galina Yudashkina. At the end of 2021, Shanti brought in 36 million rubles in revenue, Dimax – 4.7 million. There is also a very young company Get Ready & Co LLC, established in July 2022, it also belongs to Galina Yudashkina. In addition, the entrepreneur is registered as an individual entrepreneur. But these companies are far from the whole business.
Rise in Paris and life after the crisis
The rise of Valentin Yudashkin was swift. His first collection, called Faberge, was presented at the Russian Embassy in France in 1991. Among the spectators were the masters of the fashion world – Paco Raban and Pierre Cardin. This show became the starting point. Already 2 years later, the Fashion House opens and Yudashkin’s collections become a kind of symbol of Russian glamor. The whole color of Moscow is present at the presentations – show business stars, models, high-ranking officials. The fashion house is beginning to be sponsored by large businessmen, for example, Sergey Govyadin, a manufacturer of canned meat under the Glavprodukt brand. As RBC wrote, in 2008, without bargaining, he paid 100 thousand dollars for a matryoshka painted by Yudashkin.
In 1997, the fashion designer was already at the height of his fame, his first boutique was opened in Moscow, and his regular Fashion Week was held in Gostiny Dvor. Twice a year, the couturier participates in Couture Fashion Week in Paris.
The economic crisis of 1998 also hit the Fashion House hard, unique items had to be sold at the lowest price, the fashion designer himself later admitted. But there are new sponsors and its prosperity returns to the Fashion House. He was supported by the co-owner of the Soyuzkontrakt company, Sergei Popov, the name of his company is well remembered by the generation that caught advertising chicken legs in the 90s.
Popov’s partners, aluminum tycoon Mikhail Chernoy and future billionaires Oleg Deripaska and Iskander Makhmudov also helped. Until 2000, according to experts, sponsors invested about $10 million in the Fashion House, allegedly in exchange for business. Their participation in the Yudashkin company could have been attributed to rumors if the details had not surfaced in 2012 in London, where Chernoy was suing Deripaska over Russian Aluminum. In a London court, all joint projects of partners were named, including investments in the Fashion House.
In the winter of 1999, Yudashkin is waiting for a new loss – he loses shows at Paris Fashion Week. The reason is the lack of a fashion house in France, which meant the transfer of production there.
Branded vodka, crystal and pharmaceuticals
In 2002, new legal entities appeared in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities – Valentin Yudashkin Group OJSC and Valentin Yudashkin LLC. At that time, the fashion designer owned 25% each, the rest belonged to partners: Irina Tintyakova (Kudrina), the wife of Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, received 10% in Valentin Yudashkin Group, RBC told RBC. For some reason, the OJSC does not show the proceeds. Until the last days, Valentin Yudashkin was a member of the board of trustees of the Northern Crown Foundation founded by Kudrina.
Another 10% stake in the companies was received by the producer of “Full House” Alexander Dostman. He remained a business partner of Yudashkin, acting as the general producer of fashion week in Gostiny Dvor. The largest stake in OJSC Valentin Yudashkin Group in 2002, 38.5%, was owned by IFC Business Technologies, whose controlling stake was owned by coal and metallurgical trader Alexander Karmanov. The entrepreneur himself told RBC that Alexander Dostman introduced him to Yudashkin.
In 2009, Karmanov, Yudashkin and Dostman founded the Oxygon company, which produces a drug for the treatment of skin cancer. Dmitry Lipskerov became an investor, he remains a co-founder of the company with a share of 27.47% until now, the rest is the share of TGC JSC.
In the summer of 2017, it was announced that a historic building at 12 Serebryanichesky Lane would be reconstructed in Moscow. A hotel was to be located there, the management company was called Yudashkin Hotel Group LLC. But this company is now owned by the former general director of TNT Production, Alexei Velichko, and Yudashkin sometimes did not have shares in it.
It is interesting that the couturier also had alcoholic assets, vodka “Kremlevskaya”. In 2014, he and Dostman received 10% in the Cypriot Classica International Limited, whose subsidiary Classica International LLC produced this vodka at the Ladoga distillery. Now, RBC explains, the Cypriot vodka offshore is 80% owned by the Moldovan businessman Ilya Shor, the wife of the famous singer Jasmine.
Shanti LLC is one of the main profile assets. This company owns the rights to the Valentin Yudashkin trademark and certificates for the production of clothes under this brand. She is also the administrator of the Fashion House website.
Another investor of the Fashion House was the Czech businessman Vladimir Ofer. It is known that Valentin Yudashkin studio sro, registered in the Czech Republic, was managed by Juliana Ofer in 2018. The company appeared in the release of the fashion house in 2006, it was responsible for the production of porcelain and crystal products.
Jeans and oriental motifs
As experts noted 5 years ago, haute couture products in Russia do not have a very large audience. They are bought year after year by the same people, and manufacturers of goods from the luxury segment are fighting for their attention. Presumably, the sales of the Fashion House could be up to 300 items per year for the entire range – from clothes and shoes to accessories. Moreover, the Yudashkin brand itself is considered young.
Attempts to infiltrate the mass market have been made before, but were not very successful. Jeans Yudashkin Jeans with a minimum price of $ 250 were very sensitive to the ruble exchange rate, the fighters were freezing in military uniform, although it is possible that this is due to the improvements that the Ministry of Defense made on its own. More interesting was the experience with shoes in 2013 in the duet network Centro, but sales records of 15-centimeter “stilettos” were not beaten, and in 2016 the network went bankrupt. The unsold part of the collection still pops up from time to time.
The collection of the Yudashkin Fashion House now includes clothes, including wedding dresses, shoes, jewelry and accessories – bags, glasses, belts, scarves. There is also an interior design studio, for which the couturier designed the wallpaper. The latest collections that Valentin Yudashkin left for the fashion world are the release of the 2022 New Drop Autumn capsule and the capsule collection in Eastern traditions.
In the summer of 2022, Valentin Yudashkin also launched a line of decorative cosmetics under the Valentin Yudashkin Beauty brand. The collection included eye shadow, lip gloss, mascara, lipstick, brow gel and glitter dust for the eyes and body.
