The Co-Founders of Ukrainian Brand Sleeper On the “Hell” Unfolding In the Country

“We wake up at three in the morning and check the news,” says Asya Veretsa. “We wake up and check that our families and friends are alive,” says her business partner, Kate Zubarieva. She is pale, angry and upset. A bright blue jumper in the color of the Ukrainian flag is draped over her shoulders. She takes occasional quick drags on a vape. Asya is outwardly calm, admitting there are things she is simply having to block from her mind in order to carry on.

Kate and Asya are the founders of Sleeper, the Kyiv-based fashion brand that has been a witty, light-hearted guest at the fashion party since 2014. Its bright, off-the-shoulder linen dresses inspired by night dresses were a major trend even before the pandemic and its feather-trimmed “party pajamas”—launched in 2017 and worn by celebrities including Millie Bobby Brown, Brie Larson and Chloë Grace Moretz—have gone from cult item to best-sellers all over the world.

But there’s nothing light-hearted or witty about life now. Although neither of them are living in Ukraine at the moment—Asya moved to Denmark a year ago, with her husband and child, and Kate moved on a temporary basis to Turkey at the beginning of the year with her boyfriend—Kyiv has been their home and is the birthplace of Sleeper, which has over 120 employees who had been living and working in the city until 24 February. The founders have watched with horror as Russia has invaded their country in the largest assault on a European state since the Second World War. As we spoke via video call, nine days after the start of the invasion, the 40-mile convoy of the Russian army was still waiting outside Kyiv. The previous night the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had been attacked.

When I ask Kate how she is, she says, “Very bad. It’s hell. Can you imagine?” Her parents are currently in Western Ukraine. “Today my step-father has gone into the army. My mum is making camouflage nets to help the defense. She’s living with a family of poets, so they’re putting poems into the nets for the army – to heal the soul and give people strength.”

She is emotional and angry about what she is seeing and hearing from Ukraine each day. A friend’s apartment in Kyiv has been blown up by a rocket, his car crushed and now, he’s living in a bomb shelter. “The Russian army is killing people on the street. Using this Smerch system [a multiple rocket launcher] on buildings. They’re killing people in their cars when they are trying to run. In Mariupol, in Kherson, everywhere. Our colleague Anya is in Kherson with her mum. People there haven’t had water or light for four days. Yesterday, a woman there was raped by a Russian soldier.”

Asya is in another kind of hell. She’s Russian. “All of my family is Russian. My mother and father are in Moscow. My mother doesn’t believe the propaganda, my father, I don’t really know,” she says, calmly. “I know my grandparents do believe what they’re hearing from the Russian state, but they’re really old people and there’s not much I can do. My friends don’t know what to do. They are thinking of leaving. I can only support them by being there for them and spreading accurate information but I cannot make them make that choice. I’m trying not to think about it, but I don’t know when I’m going to see my family again. The world is separating. We’ve always been together speaking the same language, one big community, but I don’t think we’ll ever go back to that. Not after this. It’s understandable. When someone comes to your home and takes everything from you, you’re never going to forgive or forget that.”