Since the Iron Curtain fell, rich Russian women have had a well-deserved reputation as materialistic creatures, obsessed with wealth and labels, and mainly devoid of good taste.
But the stereotype of the minigarch's trophy wife - caked in makeup, draped in jewellery and splashing the cash on the most expensive fashion brands - might soon be out of date. Russians are beginning to develop taste.
"When we started, there was a lot of educating we had to do," says Alyona Doletskaya, editor of Russian Vogue. But now, she says, Russian women are on the look-out for quality rather than big-name brands. They're buying to satisfy their needs rather than to show off, as low-key and insider brands begin to make inroads into the market.
Donatella Versace, in Moscow for a recent conference on luxury, said
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that Russian women had "changed completely" since she last visited the Russian capital in the 1990s. "There's a definite movement towards a more natural look," says Alexandra de Montfort, the British founder of Rouge Bunny Rouge, a cosmetics line launched in Russia.
There's still, however, an over-the-top streak in many Russian woman that Doletskaya of Vogue links to centuries-long traditions of opulence, re-emerging after a long period of communist suffocation.
Sylvia Venturini Fendi, speaking at the conference on luxury, said Russian women could always be relied on to buy the most extravagant furs from her boutiques. "Sometimes we make a piece so avant-garde, so extraordinary, that we think nobody would actually wear it, and we'll just keep it in our museum," she said. "And then a Russian lady walks in and says, 'I want that'." 
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 20, 2007 |
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