With the likes of Miroslava Duma and Ulyana Sergeenko leading the sartorial pack, Russia has firmly cemented its place as a power player in the games of street style. The contenders have been known to be more head-to-toe label outrageous compared to their other European fashion week counterparts. Where in London we see youth-driven, trendy pop pieces; Paris, stripped back classics; and Milan, glamour coated flashiness; the former Soviet Union dishes up more bang for your preverbal buck, leaving a trail of re-blogs and right-click saves in their well heeled path. “No one changes outfits more often or with more look-at-me enthusiasm than this group of designers, bloggers and scene makers,” Style.com pointed out.
On the style renaissance of recent years, Anya Ziourova of Tatler Russia explained to the New York Times that “we were a closed country for a long time, so for a while, it was like a kid going into a candy shop.” The sugar high danced around in swirls of Dannijo jewels and Marni heels and Russians were spending more than $4 billion annually on luxury clothing and accessories. “We wanted all of it at once. It is only now, in the last five years, that taste has been evolving into something more sophisticated, something that might attract people beyond Russia,” Ziourova adds. The sugar crash. Strip away the outlandish, and were left with sophistication.
If anything, the latest crop of street style snaps mark a return to the original, and restrained looks of Scott Schuman fame. The looks are fashion forward, of course, and they still have that signature Russian quirkiness about them, however, all the looks are ultimately wearable. What the Russian’s do here is offer their viewers a platter of inspiration for achievable, easy elegance that’s full of originality. And that’s exactly what great street style snaps should be about.
Leave a Reply