Olha Korniienko

Olha Korniienko is a Ukrainian historian specializing in the history of fashion and material culture, with a particular focus on Ukraine and the Soviet Union. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the Institute of History of Ukraine at the National Academy of Sciences, with a dissertation titled A Fashion Phenomenon: State Policy and Everyday Life in Ukrainian SSR, 1956–1985.

Her research interests include Soviet fashion, Ukrainian culture and identity, the Ukrainian diaspora, visual and material culture, Cold War culture, socialist consumer culture, and late Soviet everyday culture. She is also the founder of the Digital Archive of Ukrainian Fashion History and has experience in organizing fashion exhibitions.

Olha’s work has been supported by a variety of prestigious organizations, including the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI), the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF), the Leibniz Centre for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin (ZfL), the Volkswagen Foundation, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM), the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission, and the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv.

Currently, Olha is working on her book Fashioning Freedom: Ukrainian Soviet Fashion from World War II to Independence, 1945–1991. As a research award recipient hosted by the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine at CEES, she is focusing on the project “Heritage in Exile: The Role of Diaspora in Promoting and Preserving Ukrainian Fashion”. This project will form both a chapter in her book and a peer-reviewed article. It explores how the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the United States used fashion to promote, preserve, and express Ukrainian national identity and cultural heritage between 1945 and 1991. The project examines the intersection of Ukrainian fashion with global Cold War dynamics, highlighting the diaspora’s role in making Ukrainian culture visible outside the Soviet context, particularly in countries that were ideological opponents of the USSR. By analyzing the role of fashion as both a cultural and political tool, her research engages with broader discussions on Soviet nationality policies, art and design under authoritarian rule, Cold War soft diplomacy, and globalization of post-war design. The project reveals how fashion became a key platform for cultural preservation, resistance to Soviet influence, and the assertion of Ukrainian identity on the global stage, offering new insights into the complexities of diaspora engagement and the global cultural landscape during a time of geopolitical tension.

This project is supported by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies as part of the Kolasky Visiting Research Fellowship.

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