Sasha Trautveyn, the most fashionable Russian on the planet?

21-year-old Siberian with a tattoo under his eye, once left school, left the province in metropolis, stealing food from stores, and eventually became a style icon and friend Billy Iles.

When Sasha Trautveyn first came on the show the brand Off-White in Paris, he was still just a tall, lanky, apathetic teenager from Russia that is trying to pay its bills.

It was three years ago.

Today Sasha Trautveyn also known for his tattoo under his right eye as Sashadidntwakeup, is one of the most recognized Russian fashion industry. American Esquire has included him in the top 10 most stylish young people of the world.

A photo of him with a dull face in oblepias garages, gray shabby Khrushchev and the typical cuisine is gaining tens of thousands of likes. With his street style, Sasha rides the wave of Instagram-fame 770 thousand subscribers. True to its popularity the Siberian teenager refers to a happy occasion:

In the place where Sasha Trautveyn, in the Siberian city of Kansk, the lives of almost 90 thousand people. Once in Kansk were evicted peasants, exiles and revolutionaries, and now it's one of hundreds of Siberian industrial cities and, as noted by some of its residents, "the ideal city to sleep".

17 years old Sasha did the same tattoo of "wake up" ("awake") on the face, sold the broken car, bought a backpack, quit school and hitchhiked to St. Petersburg, nearly 5000 km from home. According to Forbes, all for girls.

In February of this year, Sasha told me how he worried about the move:

When he met the friend who let him stay in his Dorm, Sasha began to look for work, but due to the age of the minor was the problem.

With the girl in the end did not happen. Sasha worked as a laborer on a construction site, a security guard in the office, pretending to be a charity collecting money for sick children.

After a while, Sasha had grown friends, connections and new tattoos. Saint Petersburg was his home. At that time he already had Instagram, where he posted photos of the St. Petersburg suburbs, communal and parties, sitting in sweatpants, in an old sweater with a cigarette and beaten face.

Apparently, to pay attention to it has helped the global wave of fashion in the Russian nineties. On the advice of Ukrainian hip-hop artist Yang Unit with which Trautveyn met online, he decided to try himself as a model and came in sight of the brands and street style photographers. So Sasha Trautveyn entered the fashion business.

Today Trautveyn have enough money to buy not one Louis Vuitton bag, three-piece suit to ride around Europe and go to cocktail parties with Winnie Harlow and Luke Sabbath. But he continues to mix luxury with a faded and oversized urban backyard, attracting more and more people.

Because, according to Trautveyn, his poor life, review of standards of beauty and fashion "be yourself" brought him fame:

Trautveyn uses instagram to show followers that the life of the poor can be really interesting, and that Russian life can be interesting.

He found fans among brands such as Heron Preston, Y-3, Fendi. Last year he was shot by Italian Vogue, Korean put him on the cover, and Vogue Homme gave him the passwords from your Instagram to Trautveyn conducted an online broadcast of the first show of the designer Virgil of Able for Louis Vuitton. In the summer of 2019 Trautveyn released their own merch — a bright knitted balaclavas with embroidery Wake Up — which introduced singer Billy Iles.

Sasha continues to live in St. Petersburg, occasionally writes rap, and going to fly in the US and the UK to work on a documentary about his life.