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[Gregory]

Moscow dictates to the world of fashion style

The Russians are doing everything in a big way. In the mid-1990s, the Russian nouveaux riches gained a reputation as people who are crazy about diamonds and the logo, but also tend to dress from head to toe in the production of leading designers - what is called "total-look". Jump to ten years into the future: the Russian elite pass for vulgar tired, and she wants to radically change the image. Tom Ford agrees. "Russia - a country with centuries-old tradition of a great love for luxury. In a sense, this love of luxury was just briefly ousted - he explains. - The Russians, it lies, so to speak, in the matrix, just like the Italians."

Let me introduce Dasha Zhukova

Fashion designer Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of Roman Abramovich, quickly promotes a particular style and chic in the West among the fans' high street fashion "- and certainly makes a revolution in the tastes of lovers of loud clothes at home.


Young, beautiful and terrible as the rich, and this is its own capital (due to the tremendous state of her father), the girlfriend of one of the richest men in the world and owner of football club "Chelsea" Roman Abramovich. And it's not all - the 26-year-old Zhukova is a major player in the fashion world. Her brand Kova & T sold more than 70 stores around the world. Zhukov's been in the vanguard of a new revolution of style - the post-Soviet movement "Amazons glamor", whose mission - to prove that Russians are the most powerful and best luxury consumers on the planet.

Zhukov - a typical representative of a new breed of young Russian entrepreneurs and transnational scale. She has power and influence, it has attracted the interest of celebrities: Camilla Fayed - her friend, and Drew Barrymore and the Olsen twins love her clothing line in her latest party played Razorlight. Dasha left the USSR in 1990 at the age of 9 years old when her mother Helen, a microbiologist, was offered a job at a university in Los Angeles. Her parents separated when Dasha was three years old. Her father is a billionaire Alexander Zhukov, the business partner of Abramovich, continued to run his empire of real estate, shuttling between London and Moscow.

As a student in California, Zhukova met Kristina Tang, daughter of tycoon David Tang, owner of Shanghai Tang, which later became her business partner. In 2005, Zhukova and Tang presented the brand Kova & T. His collection - which includes jeans, shirts, mini skirts, leather shorts, and dresses with bare shoulders - was set to sell 50 stores in the U.S., including Henri Bendel in New York. Last November Kova & T was presented in London, and in May of this year, his stuff will appear in the range of Harrods.

Kira Plastinina - young and successful

Many Russian girls dream to become a socialite, the wives of oligarchs or fashion. Kira Plastinina has achieved two of these three goals - that until the third, it is still too young for marriage: it is 15 years. Her father, Sergei Plastinina - owner of Russia's biggest company, which produces juices and dairy products. His condition - 350 million pounds. Plastinina, considered a beacon of a new generation of "spoiled kids" in the last year opened a chain of stores due to the fact that her father gave her £ 50 million. Now it is official designer hugely popular TV show "Star Academy" (the Russian equivalent of the show X Factor).

Prices for clothing from Kira Plastinina start at 50 pounds. This product is designed for the increasingly large middle class, which makes buying a new Moscow store category "high street fashion" - Topshop, Mango and Zara.

Kira Plastinina already sells more than 40 thousand items in a month through its 15 stores in Moscow, as well as retail outlets in 12 other cities across Russia. Her father recently paid Paris Hilton £ 1m for the fact that she visited the catwalk collections in Moscow, Plastinina. The company is now eyeing the market in the United States and is following with interest the progress of Kova & T brand around the world.

[Terry]

Olga Mamonova: "This is not a luxury price tag"

Meanwhile, in Moscow shopping centers with unlimited scope develops novel of Russia with luxury. "Until 1997 we had almost no one to rely on buyers - says Olga Mamonova, vice president of JamilCo, which operates in Russia boutique Hermès, Burberry, Ferragamo, Chaumet and Escada. - Then our client base the hundreds of people. Now the account goes on thousand. But it is decided not only money. To buy a scarf from Hermès, need not be a millionaire. It is enough to understand that it is a beautiful thing to have around. That's the real luxury - not a price tag. "


Mamonov - an energetic 46-year-old woman with perfect manicured look. She is not married, she has a 25-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son. Equip it with understated elegance: black dress tunic from Burberry, cashmere jacket with fringe of Hermès. Over tea in Moscow store Hermès (china cups from which we drink, too, by Hermès) it says that in Soviet times, taught English. Happy occasion presented itself, when it turned businessman who wanted to create a consulting firm with international connections: he needed a person with knowledge of foreign languages. "Doctors and teachers were working in trade, sell. My generation was lucky - we were old enough to have good professional skills, which is a demand, but not too old to change their mentality. You could sit back and wait for someone something something for you to do. And you can do something for themselves the most. Sit and wait - it's not in my nature, "- explains Mamonov.

Evolves, the company made the first importer of Levi's brand in Russia. "I just turned in the right place at the right moment. The state believed that two or three kinds of bread - a wide range for everyone. No one knew what" brands ". Products Levi's was for the state is too expensive and did not meet its priorities. The authorities were not interested in such nonsense, like jeans, "- says Mamonov. Experience of the company Mamonova with Levi's and Swatch in the adjustment period has meant that in the mid-1990s specifically to the firm turned the big brands.

Growing rapidly, not only luxury goods market, but also the interest of the middle class to the brands that he can afford. In December, shop James, one of the first multi-brand boutique in Moscow (it belongs to the aforementioned JamilCo), held a parade through Levi's Blue. Yu Nguyen was there, the fashion designer Levi's Europe. He said: "It is wrong to think that fond of this loud style. This trend has passed. Previously, all boiled down to, to add rhinestones and embroidery with gold thread, but here it is already obsolete. Now valued quality, luxury, craftsmanship work. Russians are no longer concentrated attention only on the title. "

Weber Alla - Moscow, "the queen of luxury"

In Moscow, palpable nostalgia for the pre-Soviet Russia's greatness. The main shopping areas in the vicinity of Tver (Moscow Oxford Street) and Red Square for several years now experiencing an economic boom, dozens of famous brands are buying up prime real estate. Because of "shopping street elite class" - for example, Stoleshnikov Lane (Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Agent Provocateur) and Tretiakov travel (Prada, Gucci, D & G). Until recently, a number of these shops you can always find other, cheaper ones. But last year a half-mile radius area in the center of Moscow turned into a sort of exclusive luxury zone. GUM department store on Red Square, once sold not only things known brands, but the most common: in the building were small supermarkets, souvenir stalls, pharmacies and fast food establishments. Now it is all gone and GUM filled to overflowing boutiques.

This is largely due to the influence of a single woman - Moscow's first "Queen of luxury goods." Alla Verber - vice-president of Mercury, which in the mid-1990s, pioneered the import products Prada, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana, and now owns the most luxurious department store, Moscow Department Store, which opened (after renovation) in 2005.

[Brian]

Werber was born in St. Petersburg. She grew up in a house opposite the Mariinsky Theatre in "very happy, beautiful and aristocratic family." In the 1960-1970-s loved to watch from the window of his bedroom on elegantly dressed foreigners visiting opera and ballet performances, and was proud of his ability to guess their nationality: "I like the most Italians - all the women dressed like Sophia Loren." As a child she could learn to fashion only by ragged German catalogs, which are sent from friends abroad. Werber was buying things for tourists - for yourself or for sale. "I remember the jeans with buttons and platform shoes," - she sighs.

In 1976, the Jewish origins of the family meant that the possibility of emigrating. While once the family Werber was a wealthy and influential, after 1917 all this came to an end: her paternal grandfather 14 years spent in Stalin's camps. In the 1970 Werber's father just wanted her to like him, became a dentist. "In Soviet times we live in prosperity - prosperous than most. But the old man wanted us to be jumped at the chance and left," - she explains. Verber was sent to Italy where she should wait for a visa to enter Israel, where she was offered a job in a shop in Rome, and in the end, she stayed there. "I did not speak in English or in Italian, but I know how people dress." Saving money, she bought her first handbag - from Gucci. "All my life I did not want to buy anything if it's not the best thing" - she said. Her second bag was from Louis Vuitton, the third - from Hermès.

Later she moved to Toronto and began working a buyer. In the late 1980s, Russian and Canadian companies have started to perceive Russia as a potential market, and Werber had involved as the only Russian-speaking staff. In 1993 she moved to work in the Mercury, returned home and took to import luxury goods in Russia.

Eisele Trudel - the rule of "total look" came to an end

Around the corner of Central Department Store, nasedaya on the heels of Mercury, runs a shop that belongs to an extremely ambitious Eisele Trudel. She enters the store wearing her name in Boots Louboutin (with zipper and tall, heels to the heavens). With her shoulders falls a fur coat, it immediately picks up the helper. Her shop she created four years ago, when she was 25 years old, persuading her husband's cousin, the banker to loan her £ 5 million - the idea is quite reasonable. A year later she returned the loan with interest. She now owns three stores that bear her name. It also operates shops Agent Provocateur and J Mendel.

She was born in Azerbaijan - a former Soviet republic - in the diplomat's family and grew up abroad. "When I decided to create his work, the main problem was not the money. Of course, it was necessary to have friends with connections. The university where I studied, MGIMO - it's like Harvard: there you gain a good connection," - she said. Now most of the time she spends in London with a man for whom the newly married - 34-year-old Louis Trudel, Canadian architect and building contractor who developed the project and its Moscow stores. Empire Trudel embodies the concept of a new Moscow-style: "Foreigners do not understand how there was before. Fifteen years ago there was nothing but Versace. Now, at the level of taste everything


Shahr Amirkhanova and Olga Slutsker
is changing rapidly - I sell things on the Libertine, Proenza Schouler, Peter Som, who had no one here knew and no one wanted to wear. A few years ago was dominated by "total look" - this is no more. "The Russian girls of high society combine things from Alaia and from Oscar de la Renta. Trudel said:" This money is for young people, not people my mom's age. This "young money" 18-year-old students who have rich parents or husbands. "
The store I happened to meet Trudel Shahr Amirkhanov, exotic lady - the new editor of the Russian edition of Tatler, which will come out in April. Amirkhanova decided to run to the store at lunch to pick up something new. This is a typical client of the shop: a cosmopolitan life style (she was educated at Central St Martin's in London), youth (28 years), clothing style - modern and low-key (she bought a tunic from Prada and "little black dress" from Vera Wang). True, the new style "clothes with a taste" does not come cheap: the shop Trudel sheds new light on how to dress flashy and expensive: from Loewe leather jacket costs 14 thousand pounds, a mini-skirt made of crocodile skin from Vera Wang - seven thousand pounds, jersey by Stella McCartney - 1,600 pounds.

If we talk about the short term, the tendency to luxury at any cost is the Russian tradition, says Olga Mamonova: "People do not think about tomorrow. They want to get today all at once. Do not think that we are greedy people, we are romantic and prone to idealism . If a Russian woman asks a man's expensive gifts, it's not because she is greedy and nothing else does not think. She is a need to feel loved, to obtain confirmation of his feelings. In Russia it is laid at the genetic level. And it not change for another two or three generations. In the Soviet era there were many constraints, and when they were removed, people are downright intercepted over the edge - and their hunger is still not finally appeased. "