Rassvet

Rassvet is one of the stranger success stories in European skateboarding: a brand started by a Russian pro, produced by Comme des Garçons, and sold in both neighbourhood skateshops and Dover Street Market. Pro skater Tolia Titaev and fashion designer Gosha Rubchinskiy launched it in Moscow in 2016. The original name, PACCBET, isn’t read “pakbet” at all. It’s Cyrillic, it’s pronounced “rassvet”, and it means dawn or sunrise, a word Russians use to talk about better days ahead. The motto follows from that: “The sunrise is never far behind the mountain.”

History

Titaev built the brand after years of feeling out of step with conventional sponsorship, unwilling to ride for anything he didn’t actually want to represent. The first collection dropped in 2016: boards, tees, hoodies and caps he designed himself, with Comme des Garçons handling production from day one. It wasn’t all polished. The early apparel used Gildan blanks to keep prices down, which drew online flak until Titaev moved to higher-quality manufacturing. Around the same time he opened OKTYABR in Moscow, a shop named after the Lenin Monument skate spot that became the hub of the local scene and one of the few places in Russia stocking brands like Fucking Awesome.

2022 was the pivot year. The brand released its first full-length, filmed across Moscow, Paris, LA and Mexico City, and that same year moved its headquarters to Paris, a decision tied to the brand’s opposition to the war in Ukraine. Brand development now runs through Dover Street Market Paris, and the project has only gotten more international since.

The team

The current roster pulls from three scenes at once. Austyn Gillette and Remy Taveira are the marquee international additions. Alongside them are Paris riders Val Bauer and Joseph Biais, Lilian Fev, Alix Malnati, Cambryan Sedlick out of Los Angeles, and Yaroslav Kondratiev and Igor Smirnov holding the line to the brand’s Russian roots. Titaev no longer rides as a team pro; he’s the creative director and team manager, with a reputation as a mentor who hands boards to promising kids he spots at street spots. From the Moscow era, names like Gleb Bugholts, Ignat Mazurin, Andrey Lyamtsev, Sasha Groshevoy, Jacob Sundell and Patrick Franklin remain part of the story. Between them the team has kept up a steady stream of video parts under the brand in recent years.

Boards and who it’s for

Decks are pressed at PS Stix, Paul Schmitt’s woodshop in Mexico, with shapes and details Titaev oversees personally. The signature graphic is the Cyrillic PACCBET logotype itself, the brand’s most recognizable image, often paired with the sunrise motif. Titaev deliberately limits collaborations each year to avoid diluting the brand, though the big ones land: Nike SB, Carhartt, and early on Russell Athletic and Hi-Tec. If you want a standard pro-construction deck carrying an identity that looks like nothing else out there, Rassvet delivers. There are more brands in this vein in our guide to European skateboard brands.