Russian Fashion Comes In From the Cold

And sales of cosmetics, the luxury good for the masses, are predicted to increase from $5 billion to $15 billion in the next five years.

On a recent afternoon, Simachev stepped over mannequins and talked over the automatic drilling in his new Moscow boutique, nestled above his 24-hour, semiprivate club. The shop and club are squeezed next to Hermès and across from Louis Vuitton. Roman Abramovich, one of Russia's best-known billionaires and owner of the Chelsea soccer team in London, is rumored to be Simachev's primary investor. Simachev will neither confirm nor deny the gossip, which has been reported in the Russian press. (Designers here don't often reveal their patrons.) But his popular "Chukotka" collection, which paid tribute to the clothes of indigenous people in the Chukotka region, may have been inspired by Abramovich, the former governor of the region.

"We do have an investor who is Russian and sees this as a business," says Anna Dyulgerova, managing director for Simachev.

The business side of Russian fashion remains undeveloped. Designers moan about the lack of infrastructure and the cannibalism between two fashion weeks in a city that should only have one. "There's no hope for the textile industry here," says Simachev. "It's much easier to make a profit in oil than in cotton." Distribution has long been a problem in Russia, but it is improving. And Russian designers' clothes are appearing in Tsum, one of Moscow's most venerable stores, and department-style stores in the provinces.

"We had the form before the content, and the style before the structure," says Chapurin.

Popular taste is changing, too, as shown by television anchorwomen who are brave enough to mix Chapurin with Chanel. From the early 1990s, when the first boutiques opened, Russians slavishly bought European brands and for the most part snubbed their own kind. But Russians are tiring of head-to-toe Dolce & Gabbana and are starting to mix Russian designers with their European favorites.

This has all been good news for designers like Simachev, who flew to Paris in 2001 with a suitcase of "Russian spirit" clothes during Fashion Week and was politely told to leave. He tried again, and a Paris showroom thrust him on the stage. Simachev is probably the only Russian designer who has never had a ready-to-wear show in Russia.

Sitting on a Lucite chair in her modern glass-box office, Doletskaya wonders if Russian design, despite its low profile in the last century, could reach a critical creative mass, much like Belgian design.

"They are sending very strong statements -- sophisticated, subtle and ironic," Doletskaya says. "Russian fashion is very new, and exciting, and it could happen."