My Story

A long time ago, when I was a little girl sewing clothes for my Barbie, I dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.

And then, many years later, somehow I ended up studying cybernetics. Economic cybernetics. Don't even ask what it is 🤭

I had always felt that I wanted to have something of my own. My mum was a great example to me — she had the courage to experiment in her business. But my first proper long-term job was as a software tester in an IT company.

I spent around six years in IT altogether, gradually moving from software testing into project management. And I’m very grateful for that chapter of my life — for the incredible friends I met, for the structure it taught me, and for giving me the financial foundation to start something of my own.

2014 divided my life into a clear “before” and “after”. I’m from Crimea, remember? Moving to Kyiv wasn’t easy. It was frightening, mostly because it meant leaving my home and my family behind.

But Kyiv became my second home. It was where I rented my first flat, learned how to take meter readings and pay utility bills, managed my own taxes, later rented an office-studio, ran a business, and started exporting my work abroad.

When I decided to start my own business in 2018, I was a bit afraid that people wouldn’t accept me as I was. At the time, I felt somewhat out of place.

But I closed my eyes and tried anyway. And almost immediately after launching, most of those fears disappeared. My very first customer was Maria, who ordered a dress from me. I still can’t properly describe how wonderful that felt. Thank you, Maria, for believing in me back then. And from there, things began to grow.

That experience taught me that so many of our fears live mainly in our heads and that our dreams deserve a chance.

Six months later, I left IT completely. Again, it was scary. But that was the beginning of working for myself, and I never regretted making that decision.

 

(photo reviews by Maria Cirulnik)

Why Linen and a Few Other Details

Out of all the fabrics I could have chosen, I chose linen.

I remember looking at beautiful linen clothing and interiors on Pinterest and thinking how beautiful everything looked. Then I started learning more about linen, its qualities and the way it behaves, and I completely fell in love with it.

That is why Airy Li began with linen, and why linen is hidden in the name too. “Li” is the international textile abbreviation for linen, but it also happens to be the first two letters of my name.

I originally started this journey together with my sister, Elvira. She was making ceramics at the time, and for many years she also took almost all of our photographs.

Later, she created her own beautiful ceramics brand — minimalistic, thoughtful, and inspired by Crimean motifs, which later became Aqyar. 

From the very beginning, I wanted Airy Li to be as environmentally responsible as possible.

What Inspires Me?

I have always been inspired by colours found in nature, especially the landscapes of my native Crimea.

I remember once playing around with a selection of linen colours. There was a grey acid-washed linen that looked almost exactly like grey rock, and a green shade I used to call “Moss Green”.

Together, those colours immediately reminded me of the mountains along Crimea’s southern coast, where you sometimes see a single crooked Crimean pine growing straight out of the rocks. Or of moss covering the stones in the forests of the peninsula I still call home.

 

 

But inspiration does not always come from a colour palette found in nature.

More than anything, it is the energy I regain in the open air, in the quiet of the trees and mountains. And the seaside, of course. But in Crimea, all of these things can be in one place at the same time. 

Silence is the first thing I look for when I go into nature. Because in that silence, I can finally hear myself. Of course, it's a silence from us, humans. The voices of nature are much quieter and wiser.

 

 

When it comes to clothing, I love loose silhouettes that give you freedom to move and embrace that naturally crumpled, relaxed quality of linen. I think that the best way to spoil linen fabric is to make something tight from it.

I wear my own pieces for years, and I love watching linen age. I have a particular soft spot for the way colours slowly fade along the seams.

What Happened After 2022?

For me, 2022 began with my second round of COVID and terrifying utility bills for the studio.

I was so disconnected from everything happening politically that in January I went to buy fabric, and it was there that I first heard people seriously talking about the possibility of war.

I still couldn’t believe it. And yet, on 23 February, I cut my own hair because for some reason I had this thought in my head: you’re not going to make it to the hairdresser. I packed an emergency bag too. And I made a video of my little flat and all my houseplants. 

The next morning, our world was divided into “before” and “after” for the second time. I didn’t want to believe what was happening. But somewhere deep down, I think I was prepared for it.

 

(The picture above is a cue to leave Kyiv on 24.02.2022. We were heading to the village "for a week to wait for it to be over," as we didn't want to believe that this was so serious).

I spent 2022 moving between Turkey and Kyiv. At first, I kept thinking: Who needs my bedding or shirts right now, when all of this is happening?

But then messages started coming from you (my Ukrainian and international customers). Sometimes you sent photos and told me about the things we had made for you, and what they meant during that time.

One customer had taken one of our tablecloths with her when she evacuated. She told me that using it in a shelter abroad gave her a small sense of home.

Another woman packed her Airy Li bedding into her emergency bag, saying: “I’m not leaving this bedding for them.” And some of you told me that our shirts were among the first things you put into your backpacks when you had to leave.

That was when I understood that perhaps we needed these things more than ever. Because they could preserve something a sense of normal life in deeply abnormal times. 

So we kept going, but in the new reality it became harder and harder to keep the business afloat on our own. In December 2022, we eventually started a final sale and began the process of closing Airy Li for an indefinite period. It hurt. But I knew I had to move forward. 

This is also where I want to thank Yana, who saved me countless times on the production side of things. Thank you. ❤️ By the way, she now has her own brand in Kyiv — and some of you already know the quality of her work. 😉

And here’s a little glimpse of what it felt like behind the scenes:

 

So, after countless moves and quite a few destroyed nerve cells, I ended up in the UK in 2023.

Why Did It Take Me Almost Two Years to Come Back to This?

Because creating something takes a lot of energy. And at the time, I had just enough of it to survive.

I remember coming here and thinking that I could always rebuild what I had in Kyiv or simply find another job in IT. Ha. I can’t tell you how many times I later thought back to that confidence. 😄

Reality turned out to be very different. Despite having pretty good English, a good education, years of experience, and even retraining, I never managed to find a job in IT.

But, to be fair, I’m a little bit like Newt Scamander here — one of my greatest fears has always been ending up in an office. 😄

So I chose work that gave me stability and didn’t require too much mental energy or constant competition. It wasn’t related to my profession, and it certainly wasn’t highly paid, but that was just the season of life I was in.

A huge amount of cognitive and emotional energy goes into adapting to a new country. And for a while, I struggled a lot with the feeling that I had lost my former status.

Over time, I started letting go of that feeling and began looking again for ways to build something of my own. Because apparently I just can’t help myself. 😄

Then one of my old customers ordered a dress and a bedsheet from me. I sat down at a sewing machine that wasn’t even mine, and discovered that my hands still remembered what to do.

That was when I started taking photos and videos of my work again and gradually waking up my Instagram after a very long sleep. I’m still finding that part difficult, to be honest. I still get stuck sometimes.

But I’m moving again.

 

A New Chapter

At first, I started sewing again simply because it calmed me down. Sewing requires planning, focus, and attention to detail. It gave my mind something clear to concentrate on and helped quiet all the unnecessary thoughts.

Then, little by little, orders started coming in again, and taking part in local markets gave me more confidence.

That support became important once more, because in the end, I’m not making things just for the sake of making them. I want what I create to be useful, wanted, and part of someone’s life.

  

 

But honestly, I don’t think much of this would have been possible for me in this country without the incredible support of Sue and Roger, who opened their home and their hearts to my family for two years and nine months. There are no words big enough to describe the care and generosity you have shown us, or how grateful we are to you and your family.

I dream that one day we will be able to return home. And that, when that day comes, you will be able to come and visit us there too. Ameen.

What Comes Next?

All this time, I have been learning to let go of things and people when they leave, to accept reality as it is, and not to lose faith or hope. And also to trust myself.

Because that was probably the hardest part of these 2 years of silence — believing that this was temporary, and that I would come back. In every sense of the word.

If there is one main idea behind this very long story, it is this:

allow yourself to try, and don’t punish yourself when something doesn’t work out for a while, or when you don’t have the strength for it.

That is normal. We can act surprisingly fast in an emergency, but processing what happened and recovering from it can take much longer. Sometimes we simply need to give ourselves that time.

For me, one of the hardest things was learning to stop comparing myself to other people, and not to start believing that I had somehow become a complete failure.

And for now, I’m writing this from a sofa in an old English village, making everything from home, carrying your orders to the local post office, and feeling genuinely happy to be back at it.

I missed that feeling so much — the excitement of knowing that someone will wear something I made, or sleep in bedding I sewed with my own hands. That a small part of me miraculously becomes a part of someone else’s everyday life.

And this is only the beginning. Stay around, because I still have plenty to talk about.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end.

Peace be with you,

Li