hello! Soviet players are available for gowns, you say? so, could you find gowns for Valeri Kharlamov, Vladimir Petrov, and Boris Mikhailov? (if it helps at all, I associate my favorites with colors; Kharlamov with green, Petrov with red, and Mikhailov with black.) you have a lovely day!
What a sweet idea to do them together, thank you!
[Right to left: Valeri, Boris, and Vladimir giggling together in their first season, via russia-hockey.ru]
[Absolute unit Vladimir, Valeri getting his groove on, and Boris, who looks like your college roommate’s new boyfriend.]
[In order: Valeri, Vladimir, and Boris. There’s something truly timeless about seeing players perch on the boards and do the kicky feet, like little kids.]
“Their style was to stun, to crush, to confuse the opponent in a crazy roundabout way, to make them panic…They melted the ice with their speed and pressure.” --Vladislav Tretiak
This is going to be the style I’m shooting for here:
Boris Mikhailov
Looking at candid photos of Mikhailov, I feel like you can understand why this guy was everybody’s captain. He looks like your friend who’s so much funnier than you that every conversation goes off the rails and you never manage to point out that he’s also so much smarter than you.
Talking about stunning, confusing, and roundabout, I would love this 1939 silk dress by Charles James, which has sharp shoulders, long slim sleeves, and a comparatively loose draped shawl collar that’s gathered in at the waist and then falls into a clinging and billowing skirt. The strange gunmetal shine comes partly from the whole dress being cut on the bias, with the skirt cut as a single figure-eight shaped piece that is wound around the legs and pieced together again.
Vladimir Petrov
Photos of Petrov, meanwhile, make you understand why his lineys basically had two options: indulge him in whatever he wanted, or try to say no, get wrecked, and still give him whatever he wanted.
I’m going with another James piece, the rust red ‘Swan’ gown from 1954. The sturdy bodice, which gives the impression of an armored breastplate, is built up with layers of sheer chiffon, wrapped and swagged over the skirt and then sweeping out behind. The color of each layer subtly shifts to give illusory depth (I promise if it doesn’t look red on the surface, somewhere inside it’s red, magenta, and green too). This thing stands up on its own, which is good because it weighs between twelve and eighteen pounds. I think it’s a delightful piece for Petrov, who could have settled for physically dominating the competition but decided to fuck them up intellectually as well.
Valeri Kharlamov
This man could wear a sack, or this suede jacket, and you would still think, “I want to hear what he’s got to say.”
So I’m going with a third James dress: this brilliant beetle green sheath dress with a gracious boatneck collar, strong waist, and modest midlength skirt, which is all cut from a softly textured fabric. This is a dress an empress could wear and everyone else might be in massive puffy gowns but you would still know who to gravitate around.
