In Chic Moscow, Shopping Is More Illusion Than Consumption

Up the road, lawmakers at the Duma are debating which prime minister could possibly save their country from ruin. But in the middle of chic commercial Moscow, ladies with Mercedes are shutting their eyes to the financial crisis engulfing them--and shopping.

Doe-eyed young women with streaked blond hair are still whisking in and out of whatever stores are still open in Moscow’s marble-and-gilt shopping malls. If you listen carefully, you can still hear the tap-tap of $500 heels and the whisper of designer flares echoing in the emptied halls.

The sea of ads for luxury goods flooding Moscow’s streets, illuminated by an unnaturally bright September sunshine, lends an air of unreality to the latest disastrous news filtering in from radios and televisions.

Out there in the real Russia, parliament is rejecting the president’s proposed prime minister for a second time. Who cares? Here, a five-minute walk away but spiritually in another world, many of the pampered inhabitants of rich New Russia just don’t want to know.

“Problems? What problems?” asks Nina Chanturia, manager of a pricey gift store called the World of New Russians that specializes in kitschy representations of the post-Soviet super-rich. It sells porcelain statuettes and lacquer boxes depicting the thug millionaires of popular legend--complete with raspberry-colored jackets, bodyguards, mobile phones, credit cards and emaciated girlfriends in micro-skirts. Prices for these trinkets, popular among wealthy Russians, are the ruble equivalent of $300 to $400.

“Strange as it may seem,” Chanturia continues with enviable bravado, “we’ve actually had more customers than usual in the last few weeks.”

But even in this fairy castle of denial, much less money than usual is changing hands, many other storekeepers say. Even here, the financial and now political crisis brought on by the devaluation of the ruble Aug. 17 is beginning to hurt.

“OK, so you still get a few regulars who come in and spend big money and don’t seem affected by any of these troubles,” 27-year-old waitress Yelena Antonova says in the hushed grandeur of Petrovsky Passazh mall. “But there are only a third or a quarter as many people around as usual. Most of them are just coming to look at the prices. Then they shake their heads and go home.”

The bar where she works is full of glamorous waitresses like her, slinking between abstract metal shapes and glass columns filled with bubbling water to serve $5 cappuccinos. Today, there are only five clients.

Antonova, svelte in the black leather mini-dress that is the uniform of the powder-pale staff at the Sladky Bar, looks like a full-fledged member of the New Russian caste that made fortunes out of the transition to capitalism in the early 1990s and then grew sleek and slim and sophisticated.

But, she says, she was a latecomer to prosperity. She trained as an educational psychologist but changed jobs last year when she found that her professional salary wasn’t enough to keep her 5-year-old daughter in kindergarten. As a waitress, she found that her salary quadrupled: As well as her $200-a-month basic pay, she began taking home the equivalent of $500 a month in tips.

That, however, was when the ruble was worth a steady 6 to the dollar. Now that it’s tumbled to 18 to 20 to the dollar in a few weeks, good tippers are few and far between, and she has no idea whether it makes financial sense to stay on.

About half the stores along Petrovsky Passazh’s marble walkways are closed on this sunny Monday--the orchid-selling flower stand, the chandelier store, the boutiques selling Rivoli beauty creams and Godiva chocolates, and the luxury porcelain shop. Some are closed “for technical reasons,” some “for stock-taking.”

The reality is that, because the rate of exchange is so erratic, it is impossible for stores selling imported luxury goods to price their stock accurately enough in rubles not to either lose money on a sale or frighten customers away with massive price increases. Many prefer to opt out altogether and hope the situation stabilizes soon enough to allow them to reopen.

But many foreign fashion stores are open, and at Max Mara and Kenzo, well-groomed shoppers in twos and threes examine the muted wools and silks of the new season. Even here, however, only a few are buying. In other, emptier stores, quiet anxieties are beginning to be voiced.

“Big crowds came in for four or five days after the devaluation, hoping to dump their rubles, but then they stopped,” says a salesman, who asks not to be named, at Krokus Moscow shoe store. “Since then, people have just been looking, and no one’s bought a thing. We’re living in strange times.”

Krokus is waiting for its delivery of autumn stock from the West.

But the truck hasn’t come--a common lament in Moscow these days. Western suppliers are increasingly reluctant to send goods to Russia, not knowing whether they will be paid in full. Russian retailers are left in limbo.

Only one store of the hundreds crowded into majestic central squares and pastel-colored cake-icing palaces dares to openly raise the issue on every shopper’s mind.

Inside the World of New Russians gift store, two life-size cardboard cutouts of bully-boy millionaires are propped against a glossy display case. “So are you worried about devaluation?” reads the word-bubble above one’s head. His crony is laughing as he counts a fat wad of $100 bills. With all the careless selfishness that ordinary Russians hate, he replies: “Of course not! I’m a New Russian!”