For several years now, I have been traveling to Morocco with my students. This trip is a field laboratory where theory and practice intertwine.

We study local culture: from museums of decorative and applied arts and craft workshops to the perfume museum, where we create our own fragrances. An important part of the course is becoming acquainted with contemporary African art — Nick Cave, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Meriem Bennani, Frances Goodman, Amoako Boafo — as well as with designers and stylists who shape fashion through the African experience: Stephen Burrows, Ibrahim Kamara, Virgil Abloh.

A key stop on our route is the Yves Saint Laurent Museum and the Pierre Bergé Foundation with its collection of Berber culture. Saint Laurent was a modernist who discovered color here, in Morocco. By comparing his vision with the mythology and semiotics of local peoples, we learn to see the palette of the continent through two lenses at once — European and local.

After the research, we move on to practice, the results of which you can see now. Under artistic supervision, students take part in a fashion shoot, where they try to translate the knowledge they have gained into a visual language. It is important that this experience never comes down to an “illustrative” transfer of codes — not to a literal pattern or folkloric accessory. The task is to find more nuanced approaches: through rhythm, material, corporeality, and the perception of color.

This time we traveled to the Atlantic coast, to the Legzira Arch near Sidi Ifni. This location was shown to us by Abdull Artuev — a photographer with a unique vision of fashion, locality, and cultural codes. He also became the photographer of the shoot. Thanks to his perspective, the images do not turn into tourist postcards. Semyon and Abdull tried not to treat the landscape and style as mere decorations, but to work with them as a visual bridge between global fashion codes and local myth.

The model was Tat — a true chameleon who became our muse. Through her physical presence, the shoot became very bodily and precise: sometimes intimate and quiet, sometimes almost theatrical. We invite you to immerse yourself in a story where fashion and culture do not copy each other, but enter into dialogue — creating a language in which Africa and Europe meet without superficial exoticism, but with mutual respect.

With special thanks to the course participants — Sofya Skorenkova, Elena Volkova, Irina Gushchina, Olesya Gvozdeva, Elena Izvekova, Irina Likhtarovich, Veronika Surkova, and Anna Knyazeva — whose vision and dedication shaped this project.