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 Russians do things luxuriously. In the mid 1990s, the Russian oligarchs were regarded as people who are crazy of diamonds and logotypes and wear the products of leading fashion designers, a thing referred to as total look. In ten years ahead, the Russian elite would be tired of having an indecent reputation and it would want to radically change such image. According to Tom Ford, "Russia is a country with centuries-old tradition of great love for luxury. In a sense, this love for luxury was briefly abandoned. The love for a luxurious life is deeply rooted in Russians just like in the Italians."
Let me introduce Dasha Zhukova
A fashion designer and the
girlfriend of Roman Abramovich, she is rapidly promoting her style and
special glamour in the West among the fans of "high street fashion". At
home she is revolutionalizing the tastes of lovers of flashy clothes.
She is young, beautiful, very rich, and at that, this is her own money
(thanks to the tremendous status of her father). Dasha Zhukova is the
girlfriend of Roman Abramovich who is one of the richest men in the
world and owner of Chelsea Football Club. This is not all. Twenty-six
year old Zhukova is a major player in the fashion world. Her Kova &
T brand is sold in more than seventy shops worldwide. Zhukova is in the
front line of a new style revolution, the post-Soviet movement called
"amazon glamour", whose mission is to prove that Russians are the most
powerful and best consumers of luxury worldwide. Zhukova is a typical
model of the new breed of young Russian entrepreneurs well connected
internationally.
She has power and influence and attracts the
interest of celebrities such as her girlfriend, Camilla Fayed. Drew
Barrymore and the Olsen sisters adore her line of clothing. Razorlight
played at her last party. Dasha left the USSR in 1990 at the age of 9
when her mother Elena was offered a job of a microbiologist at the
university in Los Angeles. Her parents separated when she was three
years old. Her father Alexander Zhukov is a billionaire and business
partner of Abramovich. He manages his real estate empire plying between
London and Moscow. During the student years in California, Zhukova met
Christina Tang, the daughter of a tycoon, David Tang and owner of
Shanghai Tang. They became business partners later. In 2005 Zhukova and
Tang launched Kova & T brand. The brand collection, which includes
jeans, T-shirts, miniskirts, leather shorts and cutaway dresses, was
exhibited for sale by fifty shops in the U.S. including Henri Bendel in
New York. In November last year, Kova & T was launched in London
and since May this year, its items are being sold in Harrods
supermarket.
Kira Plastinina is young and successful
Many Russian girls dream to become high-society lionesses, wives of
oligarchs or fashion designers. Kira Plastinina achieved two of these
three goals. She is 15 years old and too young for marriage. Her father
Sergei Plastinin is the owner of Russia's largest company that produces
juice and dairy products. He has a net worth of 350 million pounds.
Plastinina is considered a beacon of the new generation of "spoilt
children". She opened a network of shops last year with the 50 million
pounds given to her by her dad. She is now the official fashion
designer of the very popular TV show, Fabrika zvezd (a Russian
equivalent of X Factor TV show). Prices of clothes at Kira Plastinina
are from 50 pounds and above. Her products are aimed at the
increasingly large middle class that shops in new "high street fashion"
Moscow supermarkets such as Topshop, Mango and Zara.
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