Treating Objects Like Women

Proof that New Russian chicks are hatched in a lab! Mooqla, the design partnership of Polina Voloshina and Artem Lebedev, makes silicone dyevushki that retail for $400-$450 apiece.


As we always suspected, the Barbies are unwell. The company's website supplies the dolls with a chilling back story, which is that they're disturbed teenagers, ages 14 to 16, held prisoner at a mysterious elite boarding school. One girl slits her veins to show there's blue blood running through, one lops off a bird's head with cuticle scissors and yet another, in a "Mean Girls" reprisal of the famous Tatiana Tolstaya story, goes batshit after friends send her letters from a fake admirer. That's crazy Sonya below. Great acessories, though.


Photos: mooqla.com, fashiontime.ru

It's Me, Arkady!

In the Second World, you can go far with a little gumption, and a lot of PR. There’s only one name most Muscovites can attach to food, the name of a man with his finger in every pie of the restaurant industry: Arkady Novikov. At a Novikov restaurant, the food is, well, it’s not about the food. He knows that restaurant-goers are only in it for the spectacle. Just make sure the place has meat, potatoes, sushi and vodka, then spend the rest of the money on design.

G’damn, he’s prolific! Probably 25% of the restaurants in the city have the Novikov name attached to them. He caters to the entire spectrum of the Moscow social hierarchy, starting with Yolki-Polki for the absolute bottom feeders to places like Tsarskaya Okhota and Veranda u Dachi, which are out of the reach of the plebes. (No, really! The Metro doesn’t run out to Rublevo-Uspenskoye Shosse.) But, the man is best known for in-town haunts that serve rabbit food to glamorous society bitches -- Vesna, Aist, Galereya, Vogue Café and Next Door. Last month, he coughed up another one of its ilk: GQ Bar, a terribly expensive restaurant-bar linked conceptually (and, to a lesser degree, financially) to the men’s style magazine.


The March 29 opening party saw a couple intriguing individuals from the world of serious things: Pavel Astakhov (Moscow defence lawyer, represented accused spy Edward Pope) and dapper Edward Limonov, founder of the National Bolshevik Party. Even dissidents get thirsty for fashion.



These people are saggy. Let’s go back to the golden youth. Ah…

Photos: elite.ru, room.su

Spring Breeeeak!

"Bleep you, world! No one gets down like Russians get down!" Compared to the fanny-packed, opinionated "Ugly American," the travelling Russian is loads more fun, yet just as scary for the uninitiated. Wherever he goes, he brings the whole tusovka with him. He will break your rib hugging too hard.

Here's 44100's photos from the Club Paradise Tour, a Russian-run music festival that drew clubbers and DJs from the brown muck of springtime Moscow for fun under the Egyptian sun at the beginning of March. After Turkey, Egypt is the most popular destination for Russian tourists on account of being close by, cheap and full of other Russians at play. Vice nailed the phenomenon:

If you want to meet Russians where they really party, your best bet is to see them on vacation in Egypt.

Since Russians are openly prejudiced against both dark-skinned people and each other, and since they view vacations as a time to drink and fuck at levels that make even their wildest weekends at home seem like Christian retreats, we recommend Egypt as the ideal way to mainline concentrated Russianness.

Photos: 44100.com

How to be a Brash, Young Russian Designer

1. Use your Natural Resources
Ironic distance from the past is brash. Communism is a bottomless well of fashion ideas, which only former Commies can tap into without seeming incredibly insensitive. Get to it before the Chinese!

Alena Akhmadullina. "Stremleniye k Sovershenstvu" (Aspiring to Perfection), 2007.

Igor Chapurin, Pret-a-porter, 2007.

Denis Simachev. Fall/Winter 2005-2006

Also, that furry, moving stuff -- kill it and wear it. Go on. You can do that here. Russia's primary natural advantage is expendable abundance: land, people, snow minks to wear on your head, hands and feet. Russia used humans as ammunition in WWII; no one is going to miss a few baby seals. See my loafers, former gophers...

Denis Simachev "Chukotka" Fall/Winter 2006-2007

Ilya Shiyan. Fall/Winter 2007-2008.

2. The Attitude Tee
English banalities are brash. But keep it simple, stupid.

Masha Tsigal "Milky Way" Fall/Winter 2007-2008.

Max Chernitsov. Spring/Summer 2006 "Hip Hop Da Rulz."

Cyrillic is better. Because you're effing proud to be Russian, yo.

Akhmadullina.

Denis Simachev "Bang! Bang!" Fall/Winter 2007-2008

3. Homoeroticism
Being gay in Russia is still edgy as hell. Stuff that'll elicit a beatdown on the street gives your collection the air of danger.

Shiyan.

Max Chernitsov. "Rybak! (The Fisherman!)" Fall/Winter 2007-2008.

Fresh Art. Spring/Summer 2007.

3. What about You?
As in most spheres of Russian society, it doesn't hurt to be a traditionally attractive woman.

Masha Tsigal. Night Life Awards 2006.

Alena Akhmadullina. In Style Russia, Sept. 2006

Even if you're a man.

Fresh Art-isan. Russian Fashion Week Fall 2005.

Make friends with famous people, so they'll go to your shows and/or model your stuff.

Rapper Detsl in Masha Tsigal.

Pop star Dima Bilan for Shiyan.
(Leather codpiece? Bonus points for homoeroticism.)

Hairstylist Sergei Zverev in Ilya Shiyan.
(Double Bonus Points: Famous homo in an attitude tee.)

4. Remember your Audience
Gazes cast serenely, confidently to the future, Misha and Masha are the New Russian prototype consumers. Sixty years ago, they'd have been on a poster. They're cultured, they're adventurous, they eat Thai food. But you just see what sort of hell breaks loose when you try taking his Roberto Cavalli logo tee away.

RFW pre-party at Dyagilev.

Undoing years of slavish devotion to Western brands isn't going to happen overnight. Like a stubborn five-year-old who refuses to eat anything but blue cheese, the fashionable Russian public must have its DSquared jeans and D&G skullcaps slowly coaxed away, and replaced with brash homegrown items.

Fresh Art.

Don't hold back! Moscow does not believe in nuance, and Moscow does not believe in tears.

Photos: alenaakhmadullina.com, elite.ru, fashiontime.ru, denissimachev.com, adensya.ru

The One About Irony

Playboy Olmeca Club, a promotional party series between Playboy Russia and Olmeca tequila, opened at Bon on March 29. It's not exceptional, not blog-worthy, but Bon is. Last spring, the management team behind unironic, unsubtle club Billionaire -- there was such a thing -- convinced French designer Philippe Starck to design its new, next-door restaurant. Starck, known for tasteful minimalism, turned the place into a freak show with Kalashnikov rifle lamps, taxidermy wearing bling, screaming skulls, mismatched cutlery, indecent frescoes, gold paint splattered on the walls. Also, the food sucks and costs a fortune. But, Moscow punk'd? Moscow called out? Nah.

element wrote:

"Moscow’s is done, admittedly, in the aesthetic of 'rich man with no taste.' Essentially, Bon is New Russian camp. But, if Starck meant to indict Moscow, the joke is on him because the line separating the people enjoying Bon ironically and those enjoying it non-ironically is blurred, or maybe nonexistent."

A. A. Gill disagreed. The irony is so deeply ingrained, it's recognized but not even viewed as a novelty anymore:

"Restaurants in Moscow are hysterically, emphatically, purposefully expensive and gaudy. They’re more gaudy, camp and flash than the Bolshoi Christmas Special. I went to [Bon], designed by Philippe Starck, which had gold Kalashnikov lampstands. If you want the Christmas-cracker wisdom of what the difference is between America and Russia, it’s that America is wholly without irony and Russia is wholly without anything that isn’t an irony. "

Here are people at the series opening: anonymous revelers; Masha Tsigal and her homegirl; socialite Ksenia Sobchak; Bosco di Ciliegi buyer Konstantin Andrikopoulos third; and a man with his fly unizipped. Oh dear, I just relaized that's designer Andrei Sharov. Enjoying Bon ironically or non-ironically? We'll never know.

Bon, 4/4 Yakimanskaya Nab., Metro: Polyanka, Tel. 737-8008

Photos: Starck.com, Mainpeople.ru

Flight of the Tsigal

Meet club kid Masha Tsigal. When you already look like an Anime character, fashion is a natural career choice. And it doesn't hurt to have famous artist relations (Grandma designed the famous Soviet "Nye Boltai" propaganda poster). She of the blonde pigtails and saucer-plate eyes studied design in London in the late '90s and returned to become the darling of the Moscow fashion scene. Her "return to childhood" aesthetic prostitutes the cool fifth grader in a unicorn sweater you once were. All the same, we could all use friends like Masha for fashion advice, at age 11 or today.








"Milky Way," Tsigal's autumn-winter 2007-2008 collection, debuted at Moscow Fashion Week on Wednesday. The artist is moving towards a full-blown slumber party, with bold employment of glitter, jammies, felt balls and tiaras.

Photos: www.fashiontime.ru