Chevron designer Karolina Mukhovykova: “One customer asked to embroider Virgin Mary with a Javelin”

“I get orders for creating Vikings, Cossacks, and even war bees:” Kyiv designer Karolina Mukhovykova has designed about a thousand different chevrons. They are worn by the Ukrainian military, police officers, volunteers, foreign fighters within the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), and war journalists. This is stated in the material prepared by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) information service and published by the Glavcom publication.

At the beginning of the great war, the designer almost gave up. But after a few weeks, she got herself together and started volunteering. Since a lot of fabric was purchased for the future business, she sewed balaclavas and thermal clothing for territorial defense soldiers in the first months. And later, Karolina was approached by her fellow volunteer with a request to make a chevron. Volunteers have to pass many roadblocks, and in order not to produce documents every time, they wanted to use special patches on T-shirts and small chevrons.

Customers helped with materials. At that time, Karolina lived in Vyshhorod near Kyiv – fabric, and threads were delivered there in various possible ways. Sometimes by boat. After “getting her hands on” volunteer chevrons, Karolina began making flag Velcro stickers for the military and later the brigade chevrons.

To develop a chevron, Karolina first asks the customer what they want to see on it. Then, together with the customer, she sits at the computer and creates a picture. Therefore, the designer turns the drawing into embroidery.

The images on the chevrons are the most diverse, from tanks and armored personnel carriers to fragments of icons. And it happened that it was necessary to combine one and the other – one of the customers asked to embroider the Virgin Mary with a Javelin. Karolina fulfilled this order, but in the future, she refrained from depicting sacred images due to religious beliefs. For a while, the famous theme of chevron pictures was skulls; then, Vikings were later replaced by Cossacks. Nowadays, they are also often asked to draw animals: “fighting” cats, wild boars, raccoons, and even bees. It is most difficult to embroider portraits, as well as any images on small chevrons.

An image of a journalist holding a camera is depicted on the chevron for war correspondents. The idea was offered by military TV journalist Mykhailo Sharkov. At first, he and Karolina thought to depict Stepan Bandera as a symbol of love for the Ukrainian nation. But later, they decided to replace Stepan Andriyovych with a journalist in protective gear with a camera.

Mykhailo Sharkov presented a sample of a chevron and a flag to Sergiy Tomilenko, the President of the NUJU, on the journalists’ professional holiday.

“I want to thank the NUJU for what it does,” Mykhailo said then. “Protective equipment and training, evacuation of journalists, assistance with equipment, psychological and legal assistance… You can simply ask for any question – and the Union, from my experience, will be able to find a solution.”

Maksym Stepanov, NUJU Information Service