An interesting thing about Russian Fashion Week is that it was opened by a 70 year old, Slava Zaitsev, and is dedicated to Diaghilev, which serves to remind us how long Russians have been ultra fashionistas.

According to the NYT’s ‘Alcohol And Life’ section (now there’s a section header), what we choose to drink can reveal more about us than, say, our astrological sign or whether we prefer Elvis or the Beatles.

…It is generally believed that Russian women don’t drink, but they are just a bit more discreet about it and tend to not sleep in doorways afterwards.

Last couple of times around in Russia, I’ve made an effort to collect cigarette packs. As an ephemera lover, I notice the old brands are disappearing fast. Though you’ll often see old versions still fading in the kiosk windows.
It’s a bit of luck I photographed these CCCP Ovals, because my sister came in to tidy [...]

St. Petersburg’s Pushkin Museum is really all about a tabloid story. Pretty mother of four, Natalia Goncharova, is seen flirting with a foreigner. Meanwhile, hubby has received one of those anonymous letters about her carrying on with a ballroom Baron. Pushkin has no choice but to challenge the philandering Frenchman to a fatal duel. It’s [...]

I don’t often recommend books. That’s because I don’t often read them. My eye-streaming day at the news screen doesn’t invite that kind of relaxation. But for Lara Vapnyar I make an exception. Particularly as she’s such a riveting, easy read, short story writer.
In ‘Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love‘ you can taste [...]

The White Space Gallery is one of the places Londongrad’s Russians go to get their culture fix. It often features the work of lesser known Russian photographers.
The photographers here aren’t known at all. For its current event, ‘Being Beauteous’, the curator assembled rare and unusual photos from Soviet Russia, all around the theme of the [...]

Today, everyone is remembering Yeltsin as the President of meltdown and poverty in Russia.
He not only presided over capital flight but also female flight. The late nineties saw the heyday of the Russian Bride exodus when numbers doubled almost year on year. Well, if all the money in Russia had been laundered abroad, there [...]

On Saturday Night Live, Wayne Campbell famously said: ‘the best thing about the collapse of the Soviet Union is that there would be ‘no more cheesy behind-the-iron-curtain metal bands like Gorky Park.’

Still the only ‘Soviet’ bands most Westerners can name are probably Gorky Park and the Leningrad Cowboys. Both were packaged with kitch Soviet-look [...]

Should you find yourself snagged by a Russian Bride, chances are that you’ll wind up at Zags.

The Russian registry office is a wonderful Soviet institution that you can still enjoy today. Most provincial Zags ‘Palaces Of Marriage’ are on the ground floor of ugly concrete blocks and hard to distinguish from dry cleaners or nondescript [...]

Let us now draw a line under this unfortunate Litvinenko affair and look forward to a season of peace and goodwill.

Hat tip to DPG at Moscow Expat Forum