Echoes from Ukraine

The conversation took place in letters rather than voices, words traveling between Lviv and Paris. Each answer arrived like a piece of fabric unrolled, revealing care, rhythm, and silence. Even through text, Nadiia Dumka’s presence felt grounded and luminous. A designer and founder of DUMKA, she weaves memory into modernity, giving tradition a living voice. I invite you to follow me into her world, where fabric speaks Ukrainian.

The Years of Silent Elegance

Nadiia grew up in Lviv in a family where discipline met grace. From her earliest memories, she chose her dresses with care, fixed her hair neatly, and noticed colors before words. But it was her mother, a costume designer at the Lviv Opera, who shaped her sense of beauty. “She was elegance itself,” Nadiia remembers. “Refined, feminine, patient. I always wanted to be like her.”

The backstage world of the opera left a deep impression: the smell of fabrics, the glimmer of stage lights, the quiet concentration before a performance. Yet her mother, knowing the fragility of artistic life, advised her daughter to pursue stability instead.

So Nadiia did what was expected. She studied accounting, economics, and management, building a solid career in finance that lasted more than two decades. She rose from specialist to financial director. But somewhere beneath the numbers, something kept whispering.“There was always another voice inside me,” she says. “A creative one, waiting.”

The Return to Herself

At forty, she decided to answer that voice. Enrolling in the Lviv Fashion School, she studied illustration, textiles, and the history of costume. “It was like breathing again,” she recalls. Within two days she could fill entire pages with sketches, twenty, thirty looks drawn from an invisible reservoir of ideas. “I felt energy, freedom. For the first time, I wasn’t working. I was creating.”

Two years later, she opened her own studio and began her first collection. It was 2020, the world uncertain, yet she had never felt clearer. “That was when I understood: work can build a life, but creation gives it meaning.”

The Birth of DUMKA

Her brand, DUMKA, bears her family name, but also her philosophy. In Ukrainian, dumka means “thought”, an inner reflection, a quiet voice. “For me,” she says, “it’s what lives inside a person, memory, energy, emotion.”

She sees fashion not as decoration but as language. Through embroidery, ornament, and texture, she tells stories of heritage, transforming old Ukrainian codes into modern silhouettes. “I want each piece to speak,” she explains. “Not loudly, but deeply.”

DUMKA stands at the meeting point of tradition and modernity, of strength and softness. It carries the calm assurance that beauty can hold meaning, that culture can be worn, not as nostalgia, but as continuity.

Creating in Wartime

When the full-scale invasion reached her country in 2022, Nadiia’s art changed tone. Her sister, godmother, and close friend fled Kyiv under bombardment. “They called me from the road,” she recalls. “We’ve been driving for three days… We don’t know if we’ll make it.’”

They did. But those days left an imprint. Out of that experience came a new collection: “Inspired by Ukraine.” Each piece carried wings, symbols of freedom, protection, and return. “I made small wing-shaped brooches for the women close to me,” she says. “So they would feel lifted, reminded that they would come home.”

The colors were blue and yellow, not simply patriotic, but spiritual, like sky and field, soul and ground. “For me, being a designer now means more than making clothes,” she says. “It’s about feeling the rhythm of my land, the strength of my people, the history of those who came before us.”

When people look at her creations, she hopes they sense that same vibration, not just the beauty of fabric, but the touch of hands, the pulse of a nation that continues to create even under fire.

The Quiet Power of Dignity

What does she want people to feel when they wear DUMKA? “Strength,” she writes. “Not the kind that shouts but the kind that stands quietly inside.” Many women tell her that wearing DUMKA brings confidence, as if within these garments dreams can come true. “It’s because each piece carries energy from our land, our prayers, our ancestors,” she says. “We Ukrainians are strong, not because of war, but because love and faith have always lived in us.”

In 2025, she unveiled a new collection called “Grono” (Grapes in Ukrainian), a symbol of unity, feminine strength, and family roots. She created it after watching Ukrainian women sustain life in impossible times, supporting one another, keeping warmth alive, and building home where there seemed to be none.

The pieces of “Grono” use natural fabrics, hand embroidery, and deep wine and berry tones that speak of maturity and endurance. It is about love that does not fade, even when the world changes. The grape cluster itself carries a deeper meaning. Like a vine that connects and nourishes its branches, Ukrainian women come together sharing strength, energy, and abundance. This is the united power of Ukrainian women: rooted in love, growing through solidarity, and blossoming even in the hardest times.

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Valentin JEDRASZYK / Echoes from Ukraine