Illya Shpetrik was born to a middle-class family in the 1980s with nothing truly remarkable in his life. However, he has now amassed an impressive portfolio of fashion work and a lot of charitable work to go alongside it. Illya Shpetrik is not a fashion designer and inventor who craves the spotlight. As he puts it: “it is easier to foist yourself into the limelight with unimaginative fashion concepts. The brand that is Illya Shpetrik is all about the innovation and inspiration that makes fashion, what it is today; the limelight is not even secondary to that…it’s tertiary.”
Shpetrik has always had a strong interest in the world of fashion and the wider culture that surrounds each and every piece of clothing we all wear. He did however, at a young age have somewhat of an epiphany when his mother, a supermarket worker came home with her shopping.
Even at the young age of six years old, Illya realised that there was a lot of plastic and a lot of polluting materials at the heart of everyone’s shopping trip. His mother, coming home with a few plastic carrier bags, in which there were various items further packaged in plastic was all it took for his journey to fashion to begin.
A keen environmentalist who regularly donates to several environmental causes, Illya Shpetrik always strives to ensure all the clothing and all fashion he has a hand in is made from renewable and wherever possible, biodegradable materials. He understands the impact of fast fashion on the world, ecosystems and the wider environment and from the very start of his carer he has sought to be very different.
To find the inspiration that makes his work what it is today, Illya Shpetrik has travelled far and wide to inspire and educate himself. With his father currently living in Belize and his mother in North America, Shpetrik has naturally found himself travelling between north and south of the continent.
Having excelled in school in the sciences, particularly biology and chemistry, subjects Illya still holds dear, he is always conscious about what the make-up of any of the materials and products he uses could do if abandoned to the elements. This, Shpetrik believes is one of the key things that sets him far apart from all other fashion designers.
“Other fashion labels and designers create their brands and clothing and only when it is pointed out to them that their brands are being found across the world in landfills or even in the oceans do they take action. You will never, ever find an Illya Shpetrik label in any landfill and in any ocean. We do things the other, what I believe to be correct way round…what is the environmental impact of this design and these materials and thus, should we produce it?”