Bloomies Taps Into Soviet Market for Clothing Fad

Under red-tinted photographs of a smiling Mikhail S. Gorbachev raising a vodka toast, American teen-agers are raiding new “ perestroika boutiques” at Bloomingdale’s for a hot new clothing fad--Soviet military jackets festooned with campaign medals.

If Gorbachev is seeking a vote of confidence from the West for his reform policies, where better to look than Bloomies, the trendy bastion of capitalist consumerism and affluent teen-age customers on buying sprees?

Miraed Smith, publicity director for the New York-based department store chain, reported a heavy demand for Soviet exports of khaki-colored, army-style jackets with fake fur collars and hoods, which retail for $190.

Youngsters decorate them with elaborately colored enamel medals commemorating everything from Lenin to Soviet space exploits and wartime triumphs. The medals sell for $5 to $15 apiece, depending on size.

Bloomingdale’s, which takes pride in anticipating fashion trends, believes that it has found a “new frontier” in the Soviet market, said Pat Cummings, public relations director for Bloomingdale’s two stores in the Washington suburbs of Maryland and Virginia.

She said sales have been brisk since perestroika boutiques opened here on Friday. The counters are stacked with Soviet T-shirts, wristwatches and--just the item for the American shopper --credit-card holders in red-bordered black leather.

Smith said Bloomindale’s started selling Soviet goods in May when it bought some black Russian rye bread, which sells for about 30 cents in Moscow, from an unidentified American importer. “Our people tasted it and said it was the most luscious bread they’d ever eaten,” she said. “They went absolutely wild over it.”

Suspecting that their customers were intrigued by almost anything made in the Soviet Union, Bloomingdale’s buyers ordered more: T-shirts and sweatshirts bearing Cyrillic slogans, military-style wrist and pocket watches with lots of dials and buttons, sunglasses, medals and an assortment of Russian cakes and cookies.

The chain has buyers in Moscow ordering additional goods which they hope will arrive in time for the Christmas season and in quantities large enough to outfit perestroika boutiques in all of its 17 stores.