In 2009 a cultural studies student named Andriy Cherukha went to the night market in Kolomyia. At the time it was almost the only place in Ukraine where you could buy a handmade vyshyvanka. He left with an idea: these shirts should be easy to find, for anyone, anywhere. Etnodim started as one of the first online shops for embroidered shirts. Four years later it had its own production and a design team.
Reading the archive
In 2015 the brand opened its own research department. The team works with archives, museums and artists, looking for forgotten pages of history. The goal is not to copy old shirts stitch for stitch. It is to find the point where an old idea still speaks to the present. A Bukovynian shirt from the 19th century becomes the starting point for a new garment, not a museum replica.
Beyond the shirt
"We started with the vyshyvanka. Now we are looking for new ways to express it," says Cherukha. You can see it in the collections: a quilted vest with a small stitched sign on the pocket, a sun-yellow dress covered in flowers, campaigns shot at a ping-pong table under a Soviet-era mosaic. Collections such as Polyphony, Sontsetsvit and Krychevsky draw on different chapters of Ukrainian culture, and in 2020 the brand made a collection with Ukrainian artists.
Through the war
After the full-scale invasion in 2022, production moved to Lviv for six months. That same year the signature Slovo shirt entered the collection of the Ivan Honchar Museum. In 2023, together with the Come Back Alive foundation, Etnodim raised UAH 2.4 million for demining. In 2024 it opened a showroom in Lviv, and its Svoya Sorochka campaign with the Drama Queen agency won two Effie Awards.
Made to last
Etnodim says it values depth over trends, and wants clothes that still mean something years from now. Its mission is to make contemporary Ukrainian culture visible to the world. Start with one embroidered shirt, then follow @etnodim to see where the archive leads next.
