On a leafy street in Yunusabad, just north of central Tashkent, behind a wrought-iron gate and a garden planted with roses, irises and young fruit trees, stands a pale yellow villa that once belonged to a prosecutor in the municipal justice system. Today it houses the studio of designer Jenia Kim, whose eponymous label — founded in 2014, while she was living in Moscow — has become one of the defining voices in contemporary Central Asian fashion. While many designers from the region have built careers by leaving, Jenia has spent the last four years doing the opposite: building a company, a studio and, increasingly, a creative community in the city where she was born.
