This is a reflective interview piece. The opinions and claims in this article are supported or presented by the respective interviewees as well as the author, not UPF Lund and the Perspective’s Editorial Board.
In recent years, a so-called “Slavic core” aesthetic has surged across platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, evolving into a recognisable online trend. It brings together a broad mix of elements: fashion infused with Slavic, Soviet, and Post-Soviet motifs, discussion of certain beauty standards, images of “Slavic bimbo” and “Slavic wives”, etc.
However, it is difficult to view this trend in isolation. This wave of “Slavic core” popularity unfolds in parallel with the war in Ukraine, the Russian neo-imperial politics with an emphasis on traditional values, nationalism, and a political rightward shift in some Eastern European countries.
By 2025, the trend had moved beyond regional boundaries. Users from all over the world began to replicate a now-viral “Slavic stare”, that became popular because of Melania Trump and her cold, composed facial expression.
Three women from the fashion industry with Eastern European background have been interviewed and asked why the “Slavic core” trend has gained so much popularity in media and fashion.
Fashion and art
On the one hand, fashion is cyclical, and there is nothing surprising about the periodic return of trends. As Ekaterina, Malmö-based stylist with Russian roots, puts it, “nostalgia, the return of femininity, the reinterpretation and reinvention of the past, and a renewed desire for luxury after yet another cycle of modesty and restraint all can be found in ‘Slavic core‘, but they are by no means unique to it.”
The “Slavic core” trend draws on a number of specific aesthetics. According to Ekaterina, “there is the line that runs from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, then the later Zhivago look with its fur-clad melancholy, and then the post-Soviet aesthetic that entered global fashion through Gosha Rubchinskiy, Demna Gvasalia, etc.”
After the collapse of the USSR, Western perceptions of Russia were shaped by images of poverty, social decay and bleak urban environments. These images became stereotypes (e.g. “slav squat,”, adidas tracksuits, gopnik culture), but over time, they turned into recognisable visual codes and were reinterpreted. Designers like Demna Gvasalia played a major role in transforming these elements into high fashion.
According to Ekaterina, the main idea behind this aesthetic is celebrating notions of toughness and lived hardship; combining ugly with beautiful; luxurious with everyday. This reflects “the memory of scarcity, the post-Soviet experience, the tension between display and trauma.”
Another interviewee, the stylist Alena, residing in France, also emphasises the impact of trauma on this aesthetic: “It explains itself clearly by the times we live in — hard times, wars, sufferings. Women are tired of being strong; they just want to be themselves — very feminine.”
Promoting culture or self-stereotyping
On the other hand, this trend can be seen as a feeling of being proud of one’s ethnic background. The trend reflects a desire for roots and belonging, resistance to global homogenized culture and is similar to other trends such as #arabtok, #nativetok.
Unfortunately, like in any other case of commodification of culture, cultural elements are often removed from their original context and turned into trends by global brands. One example of this is the babushka scarf, which originated centuries ago in Eastern Europe and then was picked up by A$AP Rocky, Gucci and other brands.
Taking a closer look at the “Slavic core” influencers whose main focus is on entertainment content, we can see that, despite often educating their audience on culture — producing funny, unharmful content — many videos reflect self-stereotyping, in which identity is reduced to stylised and often exaggerated cultural markers. Eastern European women are often simultaneously idealised and devalued, constructed as the last bastion of traditional values, while hypermasculine forms of male behaviour are normalised through laughter.
This dynamic can be understood through Robert K. Merton’s concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby initially simplified or stylised representations of identity become socially “real” through repeated performance and recognition.
Which Culture is Really Promoted?
What makes the “Slavic core” trend controversial is the number of narratives intertwined within it. At times, it becomes difficult to distinguish where fashion ends and politics begins, where irony turns into stereotyping, and where the celebration of culture gives way to the whitewashing of its more complex and often troubling realities.
Although the trend originated in grassroots online spaces, it can be interpreted as soft power romanticising elements of Russian cultural aesthetics and contributing to the construction of an appealing and “traditional” image of Russia.
In this context, the blurred distinction between what is framed as “Russian” and what is understood as broadly “Slavic” emerges as a central tension within the trend. Interestingly, many Russian influencers — including liberal opposition — tend to describe the trend as “Russian” rather than “Slavic”, often without acknowledging the political weight of such framing. In this sense, even casual descriptions can mirror broader narratives associated with the idea of a unified “Russian world”.
Alena explains that what is labeled as “Slavic” often functions, in practice, as a reference to Russian culture. She connects the rise of the trend to the political tension following the war in Ukraine, when openly promoting Russian identity became more sensitive and, at times, unwelcome. In this sense, the current popularity of “Slavic core” can be seen as a kind of backlash — a renewed urge to express cultural identity through fashion and social media.
A fashion designer from Poland, Emilia, agrees that people sometimes call it “Russian core” instead of “Slavic core” because “Russia is the most visible Slavic country globally, and many Western audiences lump everything Eastern European together. /…/ It’s not fully accurate, but the name stuck online”.
This also invites a closer examination of the so-called “Slavic stare”, raising the question of whether it is, in fact, inherently “Slavic”. Female and male creators from Eastern Europe produced a wave of videos where they show the foreigners how the “Slavic Stare” should be performed or, rather, embodied. This “is lived experience, not an aesthetic”, some say in the comments.
At the same time, non-Slavic communities across the post-Soviet countries began showcasing their own variations of this “stare,” raising questions about who the trend belongs to.
The Aestheticization of Soviet Trauma?
A cold, suspicious, and at times dismissive gaze may not be about “Slavicness” as a cultural category, and more with the aestheticization of trauma itself. It effectively celebrates a shared sense of post-Soviet and post-Communist collective experience, inviting audiences to embrace and perform these narratives of hardship.
Indeed, many creators refer to “generational” or even “civilisational” trauma in their videos. As Ekaterina notes, the ‘Slavic core’ aesthetic carries a “painful, tense, at times ironic intonation”. Alena connects “slavic stare” to “our life and history and what we have gone through over the past 100 years.”
This also raises a broader question: to what extent is it appropriate to foreground narratives of Soviet trauma at a time when the war in Ukraine is ongoing? Can two seemingly opposite trends really coexist: the ongoing Russian aggression and attempts to erase Ukrainian culture, and, at the same time, the popularization of Soviet aesthetics with flattening of experiences into a shared “post-Soviet trauma”? Does it not result in a form of whitewashing?
Fashion and art have long been seen as untouchable: Hugo Boss once dressed the Nazis, and the brand recovered. Balenciaga’s references to BDSM and child abuse were justified as provocation or form of art and they moved on. Therefore, the question emerges: can fashion ever be truly apolitical in a time when style becomes a soft weapon? When the “Slavic” style trends, but the visual language that dominates is specifically Russian or Soviet, do we witness yet another cultural imperial gesture in the realm of aesthetics? And what exactly is “Slavic core” — a trend, a coping mechanism, or a soft-power tool disguised as style?
By Lera Lindström
16 April, 2026
