'Nostalgic Reflections' Editorial for All Within Magazine featuring Stööki Jewellery 👀

We are so glad we could be a part of this incredible shoot! The 'Nostalgic Reflections' Editorial for All Within Magazine centers around three central issues - post-soviet style, glamorisation of the past and Eastern European transients living in the UK. Shedding light on the age of Eastern Europeans that experienced childhood in their recently autonomous nations and afterward regarded themselves as living abroad. However, their homes will always be remembered because they reflect the place where they grew up and channel the influence of the past on their families.

Check out the images from the shoot below...

Words by Rasa Balciunaite

Regardless of whether it is just a memory or it is experienced through their families, there is a strong sense of idealisation of the past, positive or negative, and this can be one of the ways to connect with people that share feelings of homesickness in a foreign country. It is fascinating how so many countries, so-called Eastern Block, carry the same identities and could tell similar stories, such as of growing up in brutalist-style apartments, visiting grandparents in the village every summer, and going on an early morning shopping rush before school starts. Not to mention the fashion of tracksuits and athleisure mixed with babushka scarves and balaclavas, which were an essential choice of clothing,which then later became known as post-soviet fashion in the West.

Coming to an unknown country, mixed with so many different cultures, it can be overwhelming at first, especially when coming from placeswhere standing out from the crowd and deviating was considered a flaw. Since many things can feel uncertain at such times, people start tolook for comfort in the past, or anything that’s reminiscent of it, to feel the needed security and stability. Seeking comfort in something familiar- food, places, fashion and people, brings them back home, at least for a moment.

This editorial depicts how Eastern Europeans find familiarity in a foreign place and embrace their heritage, evoking feelings of nostalgia,solitude, bitter-sweetness, and alienation through the chosen locations, styling and model juxtaposition. The concept will be perceived through the eyes of Eastern Europeans who grew up in post-socialist countries and moved abroad.

To fully capture the essence of this editorial, the whole creative team is from parts of Eastern Europe: Lithuania, Latvia, Poland.