Before the full-scale war, Ukraine was one of the key hubs for international commercial production, fostering a generation of professionals who now work across the global film industry.

Costume designer Hanna Akhtyrska, credited on Ukrainian projects under the professional name Anita Zhyrgalova, has worked on campaigns for Huawei, KitKat, Subway, Kinder, Louis Philippe, and The Division 2. One of the largest-scale projects in her portfolio was the 2017 commercial film “Parimatch Epic Battle,” directed by Makar Severyn and Andrii Kopots for Electric Sheep Film. The project was featured on international industry platforms including Ads of the World, part of The Clio Network, Little Black Book (LBBOnline), and Best Ads on TV.

Today, Hanna is based in Los Angeles. In this interview, she discusses Ukraine’s costume design tradition, her work on large-scale international productions, and her experience in the American film industry.

Before 2022, Ukraine was one of the hubs of international commercial production. Why do you think Ukrainian costume designers were able to become competitive on world-class projects?

Before 2022, Ukraine truly was one of the strongest hubs for international commercial production. Directors, cinematographers, and creative teams from different countries came to work here, creating a unique professional environment.

My professional foundation was shaped primarily through hands-on experience. On “Parimatch Epic Battle,” I worked with an international team that included British cinematographer James Mather. On campaigns for Huawei, KitKat, Subway, and Louis Philippe, I worked with directors from France, Scandinavia, and India. Each of these projects gave me an opportunity to create visual identities while continuing to learn: how to listen to a director, understand their vision, collaborate with a team, and find visual solutions that help tell the story.

That was when I realized that a costume designer’s work extends far beyond clothing. It requires the ability to observe, listen, bring different elements together, and find the precise solution for each individual project.

Your portfolio includes large-scale productions involving hundreds of people. How does a costume designer’s role change when you are creating a cohesive visual world for a major international project?

One of the clearest examples is “Parimatch Epic Battle.” The film’s concept is built around the metaphor of sports as a clash between two armies, and we had to physically create those armies on screen. We dressed several hundred people.

At that scale, costume design becomes a matter of building a system. From the very first seconds, the audience needed to read the two armies as two distinct worlds, while every individual warrior still had to look authentic. That meant organizing them by color groups, textures, and silhouettes, while constantly making sure that no single element disrupted the overall composition.

The stunt sequences presented another challenge. The costumes had to withstand intense physical movement while maintaining the right look on camera. We worked closely with the stunt team to ensure that every element was both safe and visually precise.

On projects of this scale, you developed your own approach to organizing the costume department. How does it work?

When you have several hundred people on set wearing complex, multi-piece costumes, logistics becomes one of the biggest risks. A single missing costume element can bring production to a halt, and any delay on a project of this scale can be extremely costly.

I developed a system for sorting costumes and props by production workflow rather than by character, which is the more conventional approach. In other words, the department is structured around the shooting sequence and which elements need to be ready at any given moment, rather than around who wears what.

The second element is my own method for securing costume components, which helps prevent them from being lost during dynamic scenes and stunts. This system allowed us to complete large-scale crowd scenes without losing costume elements or disrupting the shooting schedule. I later applied it to other major productions, and teams I worked with began using the approach independently.

Where do you draw the line between fashion and professional costume design?

I don’t draw a strict line between fashion and costume design, because fashion is one of the professional tools available to a costume designer. Everything depends on the story, genre, and director’s vision. In campaigns for Huawei or Louis Philippe, costume design draws on a contemporary visual language. Then there are projects like “Parimatch Epic Battle,” where character, dramatic storytelling, and physical realism come to the forefront.

I would compare a costume designer’s work to that of a conductor. We have many instruments at our disposal: knowledge of fashion, period styles, color, silhouette, texture, and character psychology. What matters most is the ability to bring them together into a cohesive system that helps tell the story.

Which professional strengths of Ukraine’s production culture are most valued in the U.S. market today?

It is difficult for me to frame this as a comparison between two industries, because professionalism has no nationality. But I believe one of our greatest strengths is the ability to work at scale with limited resources. Projects like “Parimatch Epic Battle” were produced on budgets significantly smaller than those of comparable American productions. That taught us how to build efficient production processes and make the most of a team’s resources.

Another strength is adaptability. We are accustomed to adjusting quickly to new circumstances, working with different directors, agencies, and creative teams, finding solutions in complex production situations, and constantly learning.

Today, you work in Los Angeles. Which approaches you developed while working with international directors in Ukraine remain a competitive advantage in your new professional environment?

My greatest professional strength is the ability to see a project as a whole: both the costume itself and the entire system in which it exists. For me, it is essential to understand the story, listen to the director, understand the characters, and see how costume interacts with space, color, and light before finding a solution that brings all of these elements together into a unified visual language.

In Los Angeles, I worked on the series “Falling for the Striker” as part of the AMO Pictures Limited team. It is a vertical-format production—content created specifically for viewing on a smartphone’s vertical screen. Fox Entertainment entered this market through an investment in the Ukrainian technology company Holywater, which owns the My Drama platform. I find it symbolic that a format now gaining momentum in the U.S. market has this connection to the Ukrainian industry.

For a costume designer, the vertical format presents a distinct challenge. The frame is narrower and taller, the viewer primarily sees the upper part of the body, and visual choices need to register within seconds because the editing pace is significantly faster than in a traditional television series.

Another distinct project for me was a costume created for MonsterPalooza attendees in Los Angeles from May 29–31, 2026. It is an environment where costumes are evaluated by professionals from the makeup, special effects, and creature design industries, so this kind of work demands a different level of detail than a costume created specifically for the camera.

Looking ahead, I want to continue developing and applying this experience across new projects. The American market offers the scale I have been looking for.

Interview by Michelle Armand