|
Moscow Guide
|
| |
 |
| |
Quarterly seasonal full color guide on cultural and VIP events, including restaurant guide. Contains information about dining, fashion, social and cultural events. |
See PDF-version
|
|
|
Past Issues
|
| |
|
|
|
Most Popular Stories
|
| |
|
|
|
Sponsored links
|
| |
|
|
|
|
 |  |
| | CURRENT ISSUE | PROJECTS | TOOLS | ABOUT | |
| |
|
|
|
| |
|  |  |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| Moscow Guide 2010-03-12 19:04:01 |
| |
The Article for VIP Readers
16.10.2008 By Stas Shectman
The man thrusting fliers at passers-by outside of the Kievsky train station wears two wooden planks strapped over his shoulders, transforming him into a walking billboard for a “VIP mobile-telephone-repair” service. While you’re waiting for your Nokia to get the royal treatment, snack on a package of roasted and salted Glamurniye Semochki (Glamorous Sunflower Seeds), available at your local produkty store. And when your phone is finally in working, VIP order, it will certainly need some elitniye (elite) ring tones. Download the fashionable sounds from iam.lookatme.ru.
“Russian, like any other language, is a living thing, and it picks up certain trendy expressions, eagerly incorporates them and, as very often happens, they end up having completely opposite or contradictory meanings,” says Alexander Rymekvich, executive editor of Robb Report, the glossy lifestyle mag for millionaires. “For us today, everything is elite, you know. We have elite refrigerators, elite air conditioners. We probably have janitors who are elite.”
With its record-breaking tally of millionaires and billionaires, Russia has become one of the world’s largest and fastest growing markets for luxury goods. But while the lion’s share of the country’s wealth is concentrated in only a few hands, the language of luxury, status and distinction is considerably less exclusive. Words like elitny, ekskliusivny (exclusive), glamurny and the catchphrase “VIP” have become the cliched vernacular of the country’s consumer landscape, employed to advertise everything from clothing and apartments to frozen pelmeni and plumbing.
“In the ’90s there was a constant dumping of new words into the language,” says Maxim Kronghaus, a professor at the Russian State University of the Humanities’ Linguistics Institute and author of the recently published book “Russian Language on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown.” “Each one had its own nuances of meaning used to attract people’s attention, but then comes this process through which the primary meaning gets worn out and leaves only the sense that you’re being sold something expensive, and, maybe, of quality.”
Rymekvich just rolls his eyes. “Those words,” he says, exasperated. “We’re so sick of them already!”
VERY IMPORTANT PERSON PEOPLE
At a private party thrown by a wealthy Moscow bureaucrat, exclusive guests were treated to elite food and premium drinks. Rymekvich was there.
“What I remember most were these children, they must have been 4 or 5 years old. They put on a play for all the guests and even drew up little tickets and charged some small amount for them. Some of the tickets were regular, but some had VIP written on them. Those cost twice as much as the regular ones.”
Few catch phrases have been worn as thin as Very Important Person. “VIP” ostensibly adds the aura of exclusivity to anything it appends, ratcheting up the price tag along with it. A VIP room at Rai (Paradise), one of the hottest Moscow nightclubs of these last five minutes, runs from 150,000 to 300,000 rubles (about $6,250–$12,500). In St. Petersburg, a group of wealthy businessmen fed up with sitting in traffic proposed descending into the metro — but only if they could have a separate, VIP wagon. Designed by the Art.Lebedev studio, the wagon would have air-conditioning, tinted windows and a minibar. Monthly passes would cost about $230. VIP tickets in movie theaters may only be about 100 rubles more expensive than regular tickets, but in many of the smaller theaters the seats rarely offer better views than the cheaper ones right next to them.
If riding public transportation in style or partying in a paradise of exclusivity are your goals, you’re going to need some help. Start with a horoscope. The VIP-Horoscope service provides them on its web site, free of charge. For a nominal fee, more important people can have their special futures sent to them via SMS messages. Armed with your VIP horoscope, head over to it4business.ru, where you can find your next glamorous job in the VIP-vacancies section. Reap the rewards of a VIP income by redecorating and installing a VIP kitchen. The people at VIP Kukhni (Kitchens) will help you pick out the elite and exclusive kitchen of your fantasies. Of course, a new job and a new kitchen call for celebrations, for which the pyrotechnic company VIP Saliut (salute) will organize a fireworks show. If after all the work and partying you need a bit of a break, the back-pages of Vash Dosug, Moscow’s answer to TV Guide, are full of ads for VIP saunas, massages and special services for discerning people.
Having made the rounds of massage parlors, kitchen furniture, flower arrangements and even cell-phone calling plans, the phrase has crystallized into a single word — vip — that more or less denotes something expensive. Thus the numerous web sites offering vip gifts, vip books and vip funeral wreaths. But in what is perhaps the best example of the calluses worn onto this phrase is the redundant “VIP-persona (person).” For those people who aspire to someday be a VIP person, Eksmo publishers have recently released a book listing the secrets of highly successful people. Its title — VIP-Persons: Lifestyle Rules of Russia’s Contemporary Elite.
EXCLUSIVE ELITISM FOR EVERYONE
What could be more modest and humble than pelmeni, those little doughy pockets of grandmotherly love, easy-to-make frozen feed for lazy bachelors? Lately, however, pelmeni have been gentrified, if not in quality then at least in price and marketing. Pelmeni producers have begun packaging elitniye pelmeni, plastic bags of frozen food that, for the most part, differ only in price and package design from their proletarian cousins. One cafe in Moscow even has a separate section on its menu for elitniye pelmeni that combine two of the capital’s favorite passions — status and sushi. “Our elitniye pelmeni are made with high quality ingredients,” explains a manager at the restaurant. “We have sushi pelmeni made with salmon and lamb pelmeni made with quality meat and flour.” This just begs the question, if the elite pelmeni use quality ingredients, what goes into the regular ones?
“Exclusive, ‘elite’ products aren’t new to Russia,” says Alexander Sazanovich, director of MBA strategic management program at the Moscow International Higher School of Business, MIRBIS. “We had them even in the Soviet Union. It’s just that rather than being marketed as such, these were things like crystal, cars, even jeans, that were only available to the elite few.”
These days elite goods and exclusive services are notably more democratic, if not always much cheaper. One of the most popular categories of elite products is furniture. You don’t have to live in an elite neighborhood or apartment complex to tile your floors with “elite parquet” and laminates, serve your meals on “elite porcelain” and sleep on “elite mattresses.” For those with exclusive hair styles, the Golden Bee company offers an “elite shampoo” for a mere 155 rubles, which may be all you can afford after fitting your shower with “elite plumbing” and “elite water heaters.”
When you care to give the very best to that special elite someone, there are hundreds of web sites that sell both ekskliusivny and elitniye gifts, such as framed, gold-leafed 500- and 1,000-ruble bills, globes and small brass oil pumps that play music. Wrap up your purchases with Ekskliusiv’s “exclusive, VIP wrapping paper.” While most people may be familiar with exclusive designer fashion, fewer have probably come across the styles available at EliteProfi, a company that specialties in elite work uniforms, including work gloves, overalls and t-shirts.
Of course, the person who lives in style should go out with class. That’s why a number of companies offer a wide range of funeral services for people of elite, exclusive and VIP status, as well as all three combined. There are places to purchase “elite caskets,” “exclusive wreaths” and “elite headstones,” while companies like Ritual Elite will take care of everything from the service to burial and cremation.
Rymekvich is bemused by the whole thing. “It’s just funny, of course, because when everything has become elite, you want to ask where are the things that are regular and normal?”
For Kronghaus, the phenomena also speaks of larger socioeconomic changes. “What’s interesting about many of these words is the ways in which they’ve switched ideologies. In the Soviet Union, words like ‘elite’ meant very different things, but now they work in the service of consumer culture.”
And for those who can’t take part in the orgy of luxury shopping that takes place in Moscow’s high-end boutiques, these little labels may represent something as simple as an expression of respect and caring when given to someone as a gift. Of course, there’s always a new trend waiting around the corner. Novoya skromnost (New Modesty) is the latest. And while right now it may refer to an aesthetic of relatively less conspicuous consumption, there’s no telling when marketers
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
Summer 2009
Winter 2009
Autumn 2008
Summer 2008
Spring Guide
