Barbara Varvart !full! -

Her 2021 collaboration with —a capsule of deconstructed tailoring named ჩუმად (Georgian for "silently")—sold out in 11 minutes. No logo. No campaign. Just Varvart, seated in an empty theater, adjusting a sleeve. The Great Refusal In 2023, at the peak of her commercial power (contracts with Chanel Beauty and Saint Laurent ), Varvart did the unthinkable: she walked away. She turned down a seven-figure lingerie deal, citing "no narrative." She retreated to a farmhouse outside Signagi , Georgia, to write.

During that year away, she published a slim volume of poems— The Shoulder's Memory —in her native Georgian, with no English translation planned. A leaked PDF circulated among fashion editors like samizdat. One poem read: "The camera loves hunger / but I am done being eaten." She came back this past September, not with a campaign, but as a guest curator for Dover Street Market's Tokyo outpost. She selected 13 unknown Georgian designers, installed a single bench in the middle of the store, and sat there for three hours each day, speaking only when spoken to. barbara varvart

"People expected a monologue," she says. "I gave them a conversation." Her 2021 collaboration with —a capsule of deconstructed

"The moment you explain yourself, you're a product," she says. "I wanted to be a person." Born in post-Soviet Tbilisi in 1996, Varvart grew up during the Rose Revolution's aftermath. Her mother was a chemist; her father, a jazz pianist who left when she was seven. "Chaos was the wallpaper," she says. "But chaos makes you watchful." Just Varvart, seated in an empty theater, adjusting a sleeve