N: Hello Nikita and Ilya, could you start by introducing yourselves and sharing where you’re originally from?‍

‍
N&I: Hello everyone, we are Nikita and Ilya Khovansky.

We are 27 years old and we are twins. We were born in Moscow and live here.

Now we are working full time as fashion stylists. We have worked with many brands such as: ADERERROR, 2000Archives, A BETTER FEELING ...

N: Can you tell us the story of your first job in the fashion industry? Did you embark on that journey together, or did you start independently?

N&I: Our journey in fashion began when we entered an institute to study costume design. Since childhood, Nikita had dreamed of dedicating his life to clothes. Ilya instead, was pretty unsure about his path, but in the end we went together to study fashion.

‍

We studied costume design for 7 years and began developing our own brand (HOVANSKIE) during our second year.

Like most students, we didn’t have the resources to turn to seamstresses, so we had to take care of the sewing ourselves, and that’s how we created our first collection at home. During the exam viewing at the institute, we got an invitation to present our collection and do a show at Moscow's fashion week (Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Russia). So then we did 5 seasons and developed our brand, but we were always interested in the idea of doing styling. Somehow developing our own brand was not enough for us.

As for how we got into styling and our first job in that field: it happened by accident. Actually there is no accidents in life. We suddenly received an offer to style a shoot for some young TikTok stars. From that moment we couldn’t part with our clients and decided to take on personal styling. We've been in the profession for 4 years now.

‍N: In your partnership, how do you divide the creative responsibilities? Is there a particular area where one of you shines more than the other?

N&I: To be honest, we do not have a distribution of responsibilities, we work in tandem. There are exceptions, when we have two projects on the same day, then in this case we separate, but this happens extremely rarely. In his work, Ilya communicates more often with clients for commercial projects, when it comes to styling, we don’t have an area where one is better than the other.

We are lucky that we have a similar vision for our work, because we are twins 😂.

N: What fashion brand are you currently most excited about?

N&I: We love what VAQUERA does, they are our favorites, we often pull their clothes. One of our favorites id also Dilara Findikoglu, her designs definitely cannot leave anyone indifferent. Everything is just wow. We also love to use accessories here and there, so definitelyHugo Kreit and Panconesi.

N: Could you share some of your childhood inspirations with us? Perhaps some lesser-known Russian TV shows or music groups that have left a lasting impression on you...

N&I: Oh, what didn’t we watch in our childhood?

From runway shows to MTV's dating shows, we watched a lot of stuff. As for musical groups, we were huge fans of “Tokio Hotel”, we remember Nikita used to imitate Bill and Ilya did the same with Tom. At that time, they inspired us to be bright and not be afraid to be different from others.

N: Looking forward, what are some personal or professional objectives you’re aiming to achieve this year, and what about in the longer term?

We usually don’t talk about our goals, but in general, of course we want to build our portfolio with major foreign brands and photographers. We have yet to work with foreign photographers, so one of our goals for the near future is to try our hand at this experience.

N: If we were visiting your hometown, where would you take us to have some fun?

First of all, we take everyone to horror quests! No matter how strange it may sound, fear helps you escape from reality and take your mind off work for a couple of hours. And it's also a great time with friends.

So yeah definitely we would take you there.

We would also like to ride around Moscow at night on scooters so we can go around all our favorite places in the city at once. If it comes to nightlife, we would take you to the best bars in the city. Looking forward to your visit :)