смешно
02-11-2009, 03:17 PM
Чем то на нашу Мильку похожа...только более ухожанная. :)
http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/just-dreaming/articlemc.aspx?cp-documentid=17406149>1=32001
http://blstb.msn.com/i/2E/6B3BE54802BBC6DC39158483A9B4.jpg
Gold Bentleys, Balenciaga bags, VIP clubs with secret passwords. Welcome to the surreal life of heiress Katia Verber, one woman who's not feeling the economic woes...
Katia Verber is running late. That's not unusual for an It girl in Moscow, where the Soviet-built streets are choked with traffic. Not helping matters is that the 24-year-old socialite's It car - her mother's chauffeured gold Bentley — has just broken down. "I'm so stressed!" sighs the feathery voice on the other end of the line when I call to check in. "I'll be there in 20!"
Two-and-a-half hours later, Katia flies into the Starbucks on the storied Old Arbat Street. I can't help but ask: If you shell out $250,000 for a car, it should work, right? "Oh, no. No, no, no," she says in crisp English, with the patience of a kindergarten teacher. "Bentleys break down all the time."
Before I can respond, her $7000 luxury titanium Vertu cell phone is beep-beep-beeping. Loudly. "Ugh, I hate this ring," she says, raking through the contents of her studded Balenciaga bag with both hands. "It lets everyone know you have a Vertu. It's so embarrassing!" The phone keeps on beeping. Finally she finds it and answers with a perky "Ah-loh?"
Katia, a dark-haired heiress with piercing eyes and perfect teeth, is like one of the Hilton sisters here. She's the daughter of Alla Verber, who helps run Russia's biggest luxury retailer, Mercury, which brought Dolce, Gucci, and Prada to Russia in the mid-1990s. Katia works as a buyer at Mercury, but she spends much of her time posing for Russian glossies and deciding which party invitations to accept.
This is not the Moscow of yesteryear, when the waiting list for a clunky Volga sedan was often five years. Soaring oil prices transformed this one-time capital of communism with dizzying speed. Even today, Moscow still boasts 73 billionaires (compared with New York's 70), and the number of Russian millionaires shot up last year to 136,000. But the gap between the rich and poor is growing, too: The average wage is still a measly 16,253 rubles, or $686 a month, and 18.9 million Russians subsist below the poverty line on monthly wages averaging less than $170.
There are two Russias, as Katia says: One hobbles along, while the other races forward, spending its oil cash with the sort of careless abandon that you could find only in a country where toilet paper was once considered a luxury good.
I've come to see how Katia's half lives.
It's Friday afternoon in the sprawling capital, and we're zipping past construction cranes and shiny new megamalls ahead of the weekend traffic.
One of Katia's acquaintances, Dasha Zhukova, recently made headlines here when her billionaire boyfriend, Roman Abramovich, reportedly threw down $120 million on two paintings for Dasha's art gallery. Abramovich, who made his dollars in oil and owns Britain's Chelsea Football Club, is perhaps the best-known billionaire in Russia, but the richest is Oleg Deripaska, who made his fortune in aluminum. Then there's the country's sixth-richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, dubbed "Russia's most eligible bachelor" by the tabloid press, until he was arrested for allegedly running a high-end prostitution ring.
Katia and I cruise by a chichi strip mall called Luxury Village, which her mother helped build in a bucolic wood an hour outside Moscow. Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Tiffany, and a Lamborghini dealership sparkle among a forest of birch trees. "It's [near] where all the really rich people live," Katia says as we crawl along a two-lane country road cluttered with billboards advertising posh real estate and the opulent furniture that goes with it. As if on cue, several Audis with black-tinted windows speed by.
But the paved pedestrian thoroughfare of Luxury Village is a ghost town. "When people shop here, they buy a lot," Katia explains when I ask how this spotless Stepford village stays afloat. "They don't worry about the price." Then she announces that she needs a cigarette and some sushi. So we head to A.V.E.N.U.E., a totally empty restaurant with an imported French chef and piped-in, nondescript techno music. We take a red-leather booth, and Katia orders a pack of long, super-slim smokes called Vogues and a $26 California roll to fortify her for shopping.
A few hours and several thousand dollars worth of Balenciaga dresses later, we are running late again, this time for a drinks thing with Katia's fashionista friends at Denis Simachëv, the Moscow restaurant of the moment.
At the eatery, disco balls dangle from the ceiling, a gold-plated Kalashnikov assault rifle rests on one wall, and a painting of George W. Bush hangs above the bar, depicting the president boogying with world leaders in what appears to be the inside of a prison.
http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/just-dreaming/articlemc.aspx?cp-documentid=17406149>1=32001
http://blstb.msn.com/i/2E/6B3BE54802BBC6DC39158483A9B4.jpg
Gold Bentleys, Balenciaga bags, VIP clubs with secret passwords. Welcome to the surreal life of heiress Katia Verber, one woman who's not feeling the economic woes...
Katia Verber is running late. That's not unusual for an It girl in Moscow, where the Soviet-built streets are choked with traffic. Not helping matters is that the 24-year-old socialite's It car - her mother's chauffeured gold Bentley — has just broken down. "I'm so stressed!" sighs the feathery voice on the other end of the line when I call to check in. "I'll be there in 20!"
Two-and-a-half hours later, Katia flies into the Starbucks on the storied Old Arbat Street. I can't help but ask: If you shell out $250,000 for a car, it should work, right? "Oh, no. No, no, no," she says in crisp English, with the patience of a kindergarten teacher. "Bentleys break down all the time."
Before I can respond, her $7000 luxury titanium Vertu cell phone is beep-beep-beeping. Loudly. "Ugh, I hate this ring," she says, raking through the contents of her studded Balenciaga bag with both hands. "It lets everyone know you have a Vertu. It's so embarrassing!" The phone keeps on beeping. Finally she finds it and answers with a perky "Ah-loh?"
Katia, a dark-haired heiress with piercing eyes and perfect teeth, is like one of the Hilton sisters here. She's the daughter of Alla Verber, who helps run Russia's biggest luxury retailer, Mercury, which brought Dolce, Gucci, and Prada to Russia in the mid-1990s. Katia works as a buyer at Mercury, but she spends much of her time posing for Russian glossies and deciding which party invitations to accept.
This is not the Moscow of yesteryear, when the waiting list for a clunky Volga sedan was often five years. Soaring oil prices transformed this one-time capital of communism with dizzying speed. Even today, Moscow still boasts 73 billionaires (compared with New York's 70), and the number of Russian millionaires shot up last year to 136,000. But the gap between the rich and poor is growing, too: The average wage is still a measly 16,253 rubles, or $686 a month, and 18.9 million Russians subsist below the poverty line on monthly wages averaging less than $170.
There are two Russias, as Katia says: One hobbles along, while the other races forward, spending its oil cash with the sort of careless abandon that you could find only in a country where toilet paper was once considered a luxury good.
I've come to see how Katia's half lives.
It's Friday afternoon in the sprawling capital, and we're zipping past construction cranes and shiny new megamalls ahead of the weekend traffic.
One of Katia's acquaintances, Dasha Zhukova, recently made headlines here when her billionaire boyfriend, Roman Abramovich, reportedly threw down $120 million on two paintings for Dasha's art gallery. Abramovich, who made his dollars in oil and owns Britain's Chelsea Football Club, is perhaps the best-known billionaire in Russia, but the richest is Oleg Deripaska, who made his fortune in aluminum. Then there's the country's sixth-richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, dubbed "Russia's most eligible bachelor" by the tabloid press, until he was arrested for allegedly running a high-end prostitution ring.
Katia and I cruise by a chichi strip mall called Luxury Village, which her mother helped build in a bucolic wood an hour outside Moscow. Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Tiffany, and a Lamborghini dealership sparkle among a forest of birch trees. "It's [near] where all the really rich people live," Katia says as we crawl along a two-lane country road cluttered with billboards advertising posh real estate and the opulent furniture that goes with it. As if on cue, several Audis with black-tinted windows speed by.
But the paved pedestrian thoroughfare of Luxury Village is a ghost town. "When people shop here, they buy a lot," Katia explains when I ask how this spotless Stepford village stays afloat. "They don't worry about the price." Then she announces that she needs a cigarette and some sushi. So we head to A.V.E.N.U.E., a totally empty restaurant with an imported French chef and piped-in, nondescript techno music. We take a red-leather booth, and Katia orders a pack of long, super-slim smokes called Vogues and a $26 California roll to fortify her for shopping.
A few hours and several thousand dollars worth of Balenciaga dresses later, we are running late again, this time for a drinks thing with Katia's fashionista friends at Denis Simachëv, the Moscow restaurant of the moment.
At the eatery, disco balls dangle from the ceiling, a gold-plated Kalashnikov assault rifle rests on one wall, and a painting of George W. Bush hangs above the bar, depicting the president boogying with world leaders in what appears to be the inside of a prison.