Born in Yevpatoriaa city founded by the Greeks circa 500 BC, which is a strategic port on the peninsula of Crimea, on the Black Sea. The scenario, today warlike, is one of maximum alert. But the life of Dasha Zakharov —since she was 16—she spends here, in Buenos Aires, as a Russian nationalized Argentine. The young woman emigrated with her family to our country and her story is an example of resilience. Creative, curious and intrepid, she has records in skydiving, she flies wingsuits, she paints, plays classical music songs composed by Charly García on the piano —“my teacher is the genius Mauro Kaseiri, who transcribed all of Charly’s work to the pentagram”—and makes hats by hand, in his workshop in his house in Palermo. There he welcomes us, on a 24th floor, where natural light impacts as much as the visuals.
NEWS: You are Russian, more precisely born in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. What was your life like as a child?
Dasha Zakharov: A childhood life. He used a little red handkerchief with a little star of Lenin and at school they told us about our grandfather, good old Lenin. We celebrated his birthday, we had poems about him… There was no variety of products, but we had the basics, bread, milk… We never lacked anything, neither clothes nor food. But there were no marks. He went to the beach, it was three blocks away, and he played in the neighborhood.
NEWS: And his adolescence?
Zakharov: That was when I was separated from the USSR (1991) and Crimea remained within Ukraine. At 11 years old I was a pre-teen with responsibilities. Everything changed. Companies were privatized. Mafia groups were born. If you wanted to open a small business, someone would come to ask you for money to defend you.
NEWS: Why do you decide to emigrate to Argentina?
Zakharov: Mom had everything planned. She traveled with my sister to kyiv to do the documentation a year before. We emigrated in 1997. It was an odyssey to get rid of everything.
NEWS: What do you think of the war between Russia and Ukraine?
Zakharov: It’s a mess, they’re brothers. My wish is that the conflict ends, but I see it for a long time. No one will ever know exactly what is going on. This started about ten years ago. It happened to me when the teacher came to school one day and said, now they are no longer Russian and I am going to teach in Ukrainian. I am ignorant, I don’t know about politics and I don’t like it, but what comes from both Ukraine and Russia is false. They fill the heads of the people with fake news. I’m not for war, I cry all the time. Seeing the families with the children revives my story. Although I am privileged because we emigrate voluntarily.
NEWS: What did they do when they arrived?
Zakharov: We settled in Bernal in an apartment of 30 meters. We first learned Spanish in a public school. Then I revalidated my high school diploma. Dad studied and also revalidated his high school, his medical license and his specialty! He started from scratch. My sister and I worked. I used to sell chipá at the train and subway stations. I started studying nursing and at night I worked as a promoter. I also studied painting and fashion production. I studied medicine for a year and a half and got married. I had my two children, Naomi (17) and Thiago (15). I got divorced after 10 years and a year and a half later I met my boyfriend.
NEWS: She makes hats and is chosen by stylists as well as elite clients. When was her vocation born?
Zakharov: It all started at Burning Man. It is a gathering of 80,000 artists in the middle of the Nevada desert (USA). They are the greatest creatives in the world. It is done once a year. They build a city with mobile homes, tents, people who bring the car and live there. It is a place of pure art. I wanted to wear matching clothes. In the look, hats were essential and the style was steam punk, like in the movie Mad Max.
NEWS: Steam punk is a term from science fiction writer KW Jeter, during the eighties. Is it a retro-futuristic style?
Zakharov: Yes. It rewinds Victorian times, with steam trains, nuts, and mixes it with futuristic effects. He took a course with Araceli Pourcel to work with leather. And with Flor Tellado I learned the hat technique and studied with Laura Noetinger who made hats for Máxima de Holanda. A friend set me up on Instagram as DACHICS. The owner of the Uruguayan brand Sisters Solnicki asked me for hats. They were furious.
NEWS: In addition to his passion for hats is flying.
Zakharov: On my honeymoon I bungee jumped but got pregnant. 5 years passed and I saw a video clip in which the singer jumped out of a plane. I freaked out and told my husband to do it. He answered me: not crazy, go and kill yourself alone! (Laughter) And I went to Lobos and I jumped. I did the course in Rosario and I separated! (Laughter).
NEWS: And then?
Zakharov: I wanted to progress, because there are many disciplines within skydiving. I didn’t want it to be just a Sunday hobby; I wanted to do it as a competitive sport. and I traveled to Perris, a city in California, where the best skydiving coaches are. I trained, they saw that I fly well, stable, I don’t do crazy things, I land well at 200 km per hour… And they invited me to the records. First I went to the Latin American record, then to two world records… I got two Latin American records and a women’s world record that was approved as a Guinness record. In the middle, as my boyfriend Alejandro Montagna (52) was flying a wingsuit, I wanted to try it.
NEWS: How is the wingsuit?
Zakharov: You wear a one-piece suit with zippers and wings, in aircraft fabric, which has nozzles through which the air enters. The design is ready to plan. The horizontal displacement increases while the vertical descent decreases, if you compare it to traditional free fall skydiving. You can perform spectacular maneuvers, like birds. Now I want to learn free fly. In freestyle, you fly upside down or sitting down, and do any kind of monkey business in the air, but you know how to control it.
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