These days we're obsessed with all things Gunia Project, from their stunning jewelry to silk scarves and everything in between. We hopped on a Zoom call with founder Maria Gavryliuk in Kyiv to learn more about how she and partner Natasha Kamenska created a multidisciplinary brand that has continued to soar even during wartime.

“We met working in the fashion industry. Gunia was a hobby project we started on the side in 2017. We didn’t know anything about Ukrainian culture and we wanted to discover our roots. But we didn’t want it to be a fashion line or a ceramics brand—we wanted it to be a project.

We traveled around Ukraine, meeting craftsmen who were open to creating something absolutely new. In the beginning it was just the two of us. We would make designs, we would choose materials and then we would go to the craftsmen to make a prototype.

The first thing we made was a gunia, a traditional woven wool coat made in the Carpathian Mountains. Natasha had seen a photo of her parents wearing gunias years ago. It’s a magnificent item that can still be worn today.

For the first couple of years, Gunia Project remained a hobby for us; we still had our day jobs. But it wasn’t manageable. It got to a point where we basically each had two full-time jobs. Our audience was growing, we were more in demand and were getting featured in more publications. We realized our hobby could be our job.

We got our break in 2019. There’s a luxury wine/grocery/homewares store in Kyiv called Goodwine. We sent them hundreds of letters but they never responded. One day Natasha met their marketing director and was able to show her our ceramics. It was the first time she saw our work in real life and she was amazed. We were the first Ukrainian ceramic brand in the store. We sold out, like, the very first day.

All the money we made, we reinvested it back into the business and we expanded our offerings. The past two years, the war has been hard emotionally and physically. The biggest challenge has been the lack of people who can work, electricity, and the logistics from Ukraine is hard in terms of air connections for shipping. But we’ve boosted our creativity while learning how to operate in the worst conditions. Ukrainians are a really strong, creative people; the war is never going to break us.”