The most gorgeous and glamorous young people of Moscow. Super trendy, groomed and chick. Super wealthy and super cool. Women in high boots and with long silky hair; men with traces of ‘metro-sexuality' and aura of immense self-importance. Many local celebs are here too. Recent collagen jobs are evident here and there. I would say they were clones of the Beverly Hills crowd except there is something a little different here. Perhaps it is that they are not exactly clones but replicas. A replica of something that is already fake - is there a word for that? The Russian fashion week is happening at Gostiny Dvor, minutes away from the Red Square and Kremlin. Designer Antonina Shapovalova, a member of Nashi youth movement, has her own slot.
Nashi (Ours) youth movement came into existence in early 2005 and claim to have been formed spontaneously, driven by a dire necessity for such an organization in contemporary Russia, recognised by a 37 year-old ‘young patriot' Vasily Yakemenko, Nashi's first leader and now the chairman of a newly created State Youth Committee.
Nashi also claim that its ideology was shaped and declared first, (complete with the creation of a Manifesto, sealed on the 15th of April 2005), and only then came full and absolute support of the political and financial elite of the country. And with it, the big cash.
Except, as one of Nashi leaders told me in a private conversation, the ideology was ‘suggested' by Vladislav Surkov, the First Deputy Chief of Staff Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin's top aide, a man always looking for new ways to maintain president's popularity and root all the political decisions of Kremlin in public support, at least nominally so. Mr Surkov is a very powerful man, widely seen as Kremlin's main ideologist who has contributed greatly to Putin's electoral win in 200
