The Maria Kulieva brand can show you how to be naked wearing clothes.
Maria Kulieva creates clothing for people who are ready to be seen — not only as they appear, but as they truly desire to be.
To us, being naked does not necessarily mean being undressed. It means becoming emotionally, sexually and creatively open. It means releasing inhibition, questioning expectations and allowing the body to express what words cannot.
Our garments exist between clothing and revelation. They can protect and expose, restrain and liberate, provoke and comfort. They are made for celebration, transformation, seduction, movement and the private moment when a hidden part of you finally becomes visible.
We do not dress bodies to conceal them.
We dress bodies so they can speak.
Maria Kulieva began drawing dresses at the age of six. Before she understood fashion as an industry, she understood it as an instinct: an image would appear in her mind, and she felt compelled to give it physical form.
At 15, she transformed a pair of second-hand holographic purple trousers into the first garment she made with her own hands. At 18, she received her first commission: a natural-silk graduation dress for a friend.
In 2018, Maria graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. During her studies she experimented with couture, ready-to-wear, footwear, headpieces, metal, holographic materials, 3D printing, embroidery and sculptural forms — the art collection Deer, the ready-to-wear Only Grey, the project Space: The Last Frontier, and the couture diploma Starry Night, dedicated to Van Gogh.
These early projects established the contrasts that continue to define her work: structure and softness, armour and vulnerability, darkness and light, control and release. But technique was never the final purpose. For Maria, clothing has always been a way to transform feelings into form.
From 2018 onwards, Maria concentrated on individual commissions. Working closely with each person allowed her to understand clothing as something more intimate than appearance. A custom piece could become confidence. A silhouette could change posture. A garment could give its wearer permission to occupy space differently.
During this period, the brand found its first natural territory: clothing for parties, performances and special occasions. These were pieces made for heightened moments — when people step outside ordinary life and allow themselves to become louder, freer, stranger or more sensual.
In spring 2021, Maria presented her first independent collection at Odessa Fashion Day. That was the moment the practice became a brand.
Kharkiv is not simply where we work. It is present in our silhouettes, our contradictions and our understanding of beauty. It is a city of monumental structures and intimate underground lives — a place where fragility and defiance exist beside one another.
When the full-scale invasion began in 2022 and Maria’s original workspace was damaged, the atelier’s purpose changed. The team moved production into a basement and began designing and sewing equipment for Ukrainian defenders: medical stretchers, tactical pouches, drop bags, backpacks and other essential items. In early 2026 the workshop developed and produced a techwear project for the KRAKEN unit.
The same hands that had created clothing for celebration learned to create objects for protection and survival. But Maria never stopped being an artist. In a city repeatedly confronted by destruction, creating beauty is not an escape from reality. Making clothing for pleasure, celebration and desire is a declaration that life must continue.
In a city forced to live beside death, desire becomes evidence of life.
Music is not the background to our clothing. It is one of its materials. Rhythm influences movement. Bass changes posture. Light transforms surfaces. A dance floor changes the relationship between skin, fabric, sweat and the body.
Leather, latex, transparency, tension, exposed skin, sculptural structures and unexpected cuts become instruments for exploring opposing states: protection and vulnerability, control and surrender, restraint and release, tenderness and erotic power.
This is not clothing created only for the gaze of another person. It is clothing for self-discovery — for meeting the parts of yourself that may appear only in darkness, through music, in intimacy or in the freedom of movement. Sometimes the person you are trying to seduce is yourself.
Desire begins with choice. Openness is never an obligation. Sexual freedom can exist only alongside confidence, respect and consent.
Maria Kulieva began with one woman’s imagination. Today, it is carried by many hands, bodies and stories. Behind every garment is a team that draws, cuts, constructs, experiments, solves problems and brings instinctive ideas into physical reality.
The brand survived and evolved because people continued to work together under extraordinary circumstances. The atelier became a creative space, a volunteer workshop and a place where fear, frustration and uncertainty could be transformed into action.
Maria remains the founder and creative force behind the brand, but its world is collective.
One woman’s name has become a shared identity.
A garment is not complete when it leaves our atelier. It becomes complete when somebody inhabits it.
Maria Kulieva is also the people who wear our work, dance in it, perform in it, photograph it and give it meanings that we could never create alone. Our community extends from Kharkiv workshops and Ukrainian volunteer networks to Berlin dance floors, international festivals, public stages, private rooms and moments of self-transformation around the world.
Our clothing has travelled from Kharkiv to Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Miami, Los Angeles and the Canary Islands. It has appeared at formal events, film festivals, performances, red carpets, raves, intimate encounters and personal photographic projects. But geography is not what matters most.
What matters is the moment when someone puts on a garment and recognises a version of themselves that had previously remained hidden.
Maria Kulieva is moving closer to the body and deeper into the desires that live beneath its surface. Leather, latex, transparency, exposed skin, restrictive structures and unexpected cuts allow us to explore pleasure and discomfort, control and surrender, armour and exposure.
At the centre of this evolution is a new and daring exploration of the male body. Maria has begun designing dresses, corsets, costumes and other pieces for men — taking forms traditionally associated with femininity and allowing them to reveal different expressions of masculine beauty, vulnerability, sensuality and power.
This is not about dressing a man as somebody else. It is about giving him the freedom to encounter parts of himself that conventional menswear — and conventional ideas of masculinity — may have taught him to hide.
A corset can become armour. A dress can reveal strength. Exposure can become confidence. Clothing can give a hidden desire physical form.
The body does not need permission to desire. It needs the freedom to express it.
You may come to us for a garment. You may find armour, freedom, confidence, tenderness or a version of yourself you have not yet encountered.
We will not tell you who to become. We will help you give that person a form.
Born in Kharkiv. Created between vulnerability and defiance. Worn wherever people choose to feel alive.
If you are ready to discover how it feels to be naked while dressed, we will understand one another.
Enter our world.
Stay close
Occasional letters: new collections, shows, and pieces released in small numbers.