Kharkiv skate brand Low Blow introduced a new drop «Plich-O-Plich» (Side by side). It was created in collaboration with Ukrainian illustrator Slava Bondar
The new drop includes nine models, including oversized T-shirts, hoodies and cotton shorts, mesh sweatshirts and panamas. The items were complemented with prints with a «human chain that can’t be broken».
«We experienced the horrors of war and despair after leaving our home. We don’t want to and can’t ignore those emotions and horrible war, so we expressed our feelings in what we do best, which is clothing, — the Low Blow team explains. — We pass this stage under the banners of support. We, like millions of Ukrainian refugees, were struck by the amount of help and care from ordinary people we met along the way. It gives us strength and a positive impetus to move on and continue the fight, side by side with our fellow countrymen and the peoples of Europe».
You can buy the new drop items on the Low Blow website. 20% from the sale of each item will be donated to humanitarian organizations that help internally displaced people in Ukraine.
«We’ve been like them for eight years to this day, so we understand how difficult it is. We decided to do it this way because it’s close to us and above all, we tell our own story in the collection», brand founder Ruben Ahanesiants explained in a commentary to DTF Magazine.
In August, announcing a festival of Ukrainian brands in Berlin by the Low Blow team, Ruben Ahanesiants said that their entire team and manufacturers had been evacuated from Kharkiv with the start of the war and had no plans to return yet.
According to him, the team put full-time work on pause for a while before returning with a new drop, created with Slava Bondar.
«Our brand is going through a crisis. At one point we realized that we had lost everything and could no longer experiment freely on clothes and do what we were moving toward. So we decided to take some time to figure out what to do next. Now we’re kind of starting over from scratch — we’re looking for new directions of material supply and new productions. We suffer the most because of the loss of production».
Low Blow is a skate brand from Kharkiv, founded in 2017. It won the DTF Magazine local brand competition in 2019.
«The history of the brand began when we had difficulties with the choice of clothing in Ukraine: you could only find dark things with prints in the form of primitive lettering on store shelves. We realized that we had to change something, and our first collection appeared in three weeks. The presentation took place at That’s Wassup, where we announced ourselves as a Ukrainian skate brand. Each of our collections comes in limited editions».
