“My grandma said that it was a nightmare on the train without food and water,” says Mambetova. More than 8,000 people on the trip died from disease and starvation. (Crimean Tatar singer Jamala won the 2016 Eurovision competition for Ukraine with her song “1944,” which describes the harrowing trip.) Between 1944 and 1947, what many have considered an act of ethnic cleansing resulted in the death of around half of the deportees. (According to the Deputy Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine, around 46% of those who were deported, including children, women, and elderly, died on the way and in the first years of exile due to diseases and inhumane conditions.) Much of their culture—including the traditional dress—was killed off as well. Today, only a few original pieces of Crimean Tatar clothing remain.

During the late 1980s and ’90s, Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to Crimea. “My grandmother always wanted to go back to her motherland, Yevpatoria, and when in 1987 the Crimean Tatars were allowed to return back, my grandmother gathered all the family and they moved back to Crimea,” says Mambetova of her now 89-year-old grandmother. “It was very hard for them to leave all their belongings in Uzbekistan, but they were warmed by the idea that they were going back home to the land of their ancestors.”

Despite the atrocities committed against them, Crimean Tatars have attempted to rebuild their culture and reclaim their home. They have built mosques and speak their own language. But they have all integrated into the secular, Russian-speaking society, as well. Edie is a clothing designer, while her sister Alime is in graduate school for architecture. Abdullaieva holds two master’s degrees, while Mambetova has walked international runways. Despite assimilating, like most minorities, they have experienced an undercurrent of racism. “I was born on my own land,” says Alime, who was bullied in school for being Crimean Tatar. “But it was always made clear that I was a stranger.”

Violence and racism against minorities is spiking in the former Soviet Union. The pretty, warm peninsula of Crimea, once Ukraine, was annexed by Russia in 2014 and now the Crimean Tatar community is once again facing repression. Coupled with pro-Russia nationalism, violence against the ethnic minority is on the rise. Mejlis, the group’s representative body, has been banned, and during the 70th anniversary of the Crimean Tatar deportation, Russian troops blocked the commemoration site and banned the day in 2015. Since the Annexation of Crimea, as many as 30,000 Tatars have reportedly fled, mostly to mainland Ukraine.

Despite what can be described as another exile, these Crimean Tatar women have tried to stay in good spirits. In the studio, they seemed to draw strength from putting on these traditional costumes, which brought back childhood memories. Each woman had worn the fez caps and caftans while practicing traditional Crimean Tatar dance when they were little girls. “The Crimean Tatars are very friendly people,” Mambetova tells me. “No matter what the situation, everyone always supports each other in difficult and happy times.”

Special thank you to Nadiia Shapoval, Esma Adzhiieva, Terezka Fras, and Sonya Tsygankova.