Yudashkin rose to fame after impressing Paris Fashion Week with his Faberge collection in 1991 and designing clothing for former Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbachev.
He founded his own fashion house in the 1990s and was known for designing uniforms for the Russian army, the Russian team gear for the 1994 and 1996 Olympics, and the national football team’s colors in 1999.
Yudashkin was the first Russian designer to join the French Federation of High Fashion and was awarded the French Legion of Honour on his 50th birthday in 2013.
However, his Paris show was canceled in 2022 after he failed to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yudashkin was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2016 and outlived his mentor, Slava Zaitsev, by just two days.
Zaitsev, known as the “Red Dior,” was considered the USSR’s and Russia’s top couturier and was the first Soviet designer to have his own label and exhibit high fashion collections.
He designed costumes for the opening ceremony of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and uniforms for Russian police in the 1990s. Zaitsev died at the age of 85, two days before Yudashkin’s death.