Nikita Sklaruk and Artium Take a “Brocation” for FY Magazine!

“Brocation” Turns Chosen-Family Energy Into a Menswear Story

Nikita Sklaruk and Artium, both represented by Elinor Shahar, take a “Brocation” for the Spring/Summer 2019 “FAMILY” issue of FY Magazine!, photographed by Asaf Einy and styled by Shay Lee Nissim.

The title is playful, but the placement inside the magazine’s FAMILY issue gives the story a little more to chew on. FY Magazine! built the issue around an expanded idea of family — not simply the people connected by DNA, but the friends, partners and chosen people who create their own place of mutual understanding around us.

That makes Nikita and Artium a smart fit for the concept. “Brocation” is not presented as a literal sibling portrait; instead, the editorial lets the two models share the frame as a unit. The visual idea comes from their pairing, while Einy’s photography and Nissim’s styling give that connection the fashion structure around it.

It is also a very FY Magazine! way to approach menswear. The magazine has long been interested in male identity beyond the stiff old rules of what a men’s editorial is supposed to look like, and the FAMILY issue pushes that idea through relationships as much as clothes. The issue itself — the magazine’s fourteenth — brought together photographers, designers and artists to explore traditional families, unconventional families and the people we decide belong in our own orbit.

For “Brocation,” the creative credits stay deliberately tight: Asaf Einy photographs, Shay Lee Nissim styles, and Nikita Sklaruk and Artium model for Elinor Shahar. The result is less about separating each person into his own fashion moment and more about what happens when the pair is allowed to carry the story together.

Nissim’s wardrobe pulls from an especially eclectic label mix. The credits printed across the editorial include Speedo, Dsquared2, Tali Kushnir, Joseph, Comme Il Faut, Versace, Doron Ashkenazi, Hot, Acne Studios and Verner. The wardrobe is splashed throughout the shoot looking lived-in and worn, as if the pieces have been swum in, slept in and broken in by two teens off for the summer. They’re cute exactly as they are — relaxed, a little rumpled and never too precious.

One frame only gives part of the idea. The full “Brocation” series follows below.

Nikita Sklaruk and Artium in FY Magazine!’s “Brocation” Editorial

The pairing is the point. “Brocation” fits the issue’s broader idea that family can be built from the people we choose, while still functioning first as a clean, image-led menswear editorial. Nikita and Artium give the concept its human center; Einy and Nissim do the rest.