Dear Reader,
You are looking at a bastard –
a magazine that should have never been released. We didn’t prepare
for its birth, and let us be honest, –

our plans and preparations that we’d spent about a year on, were connected with the birth of a completely different “child”. At the end of February 2022 we wanted to present to the world our firstborn – BL8D Vol.1, a 200-page printed professional trendbook at the base of which laid the eternal search for the so-called “Russian code”.

A week after the war had started, our team decided to destroy the results of our almost year-long work and start from scratch.

We moved away from the initial format of the trendbook, from many fashion tools, and focused on the search for meanings through a dialog, that is to say, through an interview. Those images that were born during our long conversations with scientific consultants, historians and art experts, perhaps, one day will become someone's sources of inspiration, ideas for collections or just a subject of reflection.

Many of those who helped us make the first edition of Bl8D Vol.1, left Russia several years ago, sensing the tragic sequence of events even before the annexation of Crimea.

Some of our fellow photographers, artists and designers found themselves in forced emigration most recently because of the criminal cases opened against them or a high risk of going to jail for their anti-war actions, and also because of the total political censorship. And some of them still remain in Russia, and through their creativity continue doing what’s possible to “wake up” those sleeping compatriots who find justification for this terrible and meaningless War, which destroys all human and moral principles in its agony.

It is our anger and rage towards those who started this war, and those who still support it. It is our tears of helplessness and despair from the realization of Irreversibility of what has happened. It is our fears and an attempt to look at ourselves in the mirror to understand how this could happen to all of us? It is a hope for the Light which one day will incinerate the Untruth and give us hope for Forgiveness.

Reader, the magazine you are holding in your hands is our common anti-military manifest, our voice against the war.

Creative Director, Editor-in-Chief: Maria Azovtseva
Art Director: Konstantin Lobanov
Fashion Director: Denis Kazantsev

Scientific advisors:

Tata Gutmacher, art historian, Byzantine expert, the author of works on icon painting of the late Byzantine period, Berlin, Germany

Denis Danilov, research worker of the museum
“Malyye Korely”, Arkhangelsk Region, Russia

Print Production:
NAVA PRESS SRL Via Breda 98 – 20126 Milano

*The project is a self initiated project published by creative agency BOBO IN PARADISE. Tallinn, Estonia.