[Meg]

Continues...

This is a typical attitude in today's Russia: that Russians deserve and appreciate the finer things in life. Women are at the forefront of this. Olga Mamonova has a fascinating theory about why Russian women - rich and poor alike - are so impossibly glamorous. There is a huge demographic crisis in Russia: 10 million more women in the population than men. This is a longstanding problem: many men died in the Soviet purges and in the Second World War. Now, because of a low birth rate and rampant alcoholism, life expectancy for Russian men is 59. For women, it's 72. 'Women really want men to notice them, to stand out,' says Mamonova. It's women who reclaimed 'roskosh', the old Russian word for luxury, emblazoned across the cover of this month's Russian Vogue.

Aliona Doletskaya is editor of Russian Vogue. We meet in her offices near Red Square. She's wearing a black sweater by - who else? - Kova & T. Zhukova is a good friend of hers. (As I wait to talk to Dolestskaya, she is on the phone to another oligarch about a dinner she is hosting, 'Yes, darling, of course Dasha and Roman will be there.') So where is all the money coming from to fund Russia's never-ending shopping spree? 'It's simple,' she says. 'Oil has got a good price at the moment. There are more jobs for young people on Western salaries now. And they choose to spend their money on luxury: they are quite happy to live in a one-room, 14-metre-square apartment but drive a Lexus.'

Russian's elite is not trashy any more, she claims, 'but they don't like deliberate modesty either - you must know that from the Russians living in London.' The Dasha Zhukova look is the future of Russian fashion. 'Her brand is unpretentious and trend- setting. It's an example for every young Russian who sees that there is an opportunity to go international.' Although it's much easier for Dasha to pull strings internationally because she grew up abroad, she adds. 'She's young and enthusiastic and she knows how to work the PR mechanisms.'

Others, however, are watching carefully and learning fast. Doletskaya is also wearing a pair of stunning high-waisted black trousers by Igor Chapurin, another hotly tipped Russian designer. Suzy Menkes is a fan, praising his 'modern simplicity'. Holding court in his shop on the banks of the river Moscow, Chapurin, 39, is softly spoken, elegantly coiffed and lightly tanned. Many believe he will be the first Russian couturier to break into the west in the way Japanese designers like Yohji Yamamoto did in the 1980s. 'There is a paradox here,' he smiles. 'The whole world is trying to break into Russia and I'm trying to break out of it.'

His look is a relaxed version of Tom Ford: dark Levi's and Lanvin patent baseball boots with an artfully unbuttoned white shirt. He has shown in Paris for the past five seasons and hopes to open a shop there later this year. Recently there came a breakthrough: a phone call from one Tina Knowles - mother and stylist to Beyoncé. Someone in Camp Beyoncé had spotted Chapurin's outrageous molten-gold catsuit at the Paris shows. The singer wore it last year for her US tour.

In Russia, he says, his clients are self-made working women who can afford to spend £2,000 on an outfit: bankers, lawyers, TV presenters, actresses, opera singers, media figures. Dubbed the Russian Armani, Chapurin's clothes are fabulous by any standards. There is a Roland Mouret feel to his sculpted dresses. But he does clever affordable accessories, too: silk corsages and velvet headbands for around £50, long wool scarves for £80. Chapurin sells in Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo and has showrooms in Paris and Milan. His mission, he says, is to make Russia famous for creativity and style, rather than caviar and vodka: 'I want to show the Russia that belongs to Chagall and Kandinsky.'

There's a palpable nostalgia for Russia's pre-Soviet greatness in Moscow. The central shopping area around Tverskaya (Moscow's Oxford Street) and Red Square has been in flux for years, with dozens of designer brands buying up prime real estate. Luxury shopping streets like Stoleshnikov Lane (Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Agent Provocateur) and Tretyakovsky Passage (Prada, Gucci, D&G) have sprung up. Until recently you could always find cheaper shops alongside these places. In the past year, however, a half-mile radius in central Moscow has become some sort of opulent, luxury-only zone. GUM, the department store on Red Square, used to sell ordinary things as well as designer labels: there were little supermarkets, tourist stalls, chemists and fast-food outlets in the building. Now all this has gone and GUM is 100 per cent designer: La Perla has replaced Accessorize and the chemist that used to have a massive selection of cheap shampoos and lipsticks has been replaced by Jo Malone.

Much of this is down to the influence of one woman, Moscow's original queen of luxury. Alla Verber is, according to Condé Nast's editorial director Anna Harvey, 'the most important buyer in the world right now'. Verber is vice president of Mercury, the first to import Prada, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana in the mid-1990s, and now the owners of Moscow's most fabulous department store TsUM, which opened in 2005. Verber is in her late forties and on her third marriage: she has a daughter, Katya, in her early twenties (who turns up later - a mini-me with a sheet of satin black hair and an enormous fur coat). Verber's office next to the Bolshoi Theatre overlooks the snow-topped golden domes and red-star-tipped turrets of the Kremlin. A mahogany desk is inlaid with huge gold angels, Lalique figurines and vases are perched on tables and on the floor. She shares the space with a nervous assistant wearing a black felt skating outfit with a puffball skirt and fur-trimmed boots. A lady in a powder-blue French maid's uniform serves green tea (fashionable Moscow's current detox drink of choice). This time the china is Fabergé.

Alla Verber sweeps in three hours late, having been held up in traffic in her Bentley (Mercury also own Moscow's Bentley and Ferrari showrooms). Everything about her oozes stealth wealth: well-worn Bottega Veneta boots, a Ralph Lauren cashmere dress sprinkled with cat hair, creased Hermès scarf, a solitary gigantic Chopard ring.

Verber was born in St Petersburg. She grew up, she purrs, in a house opposite the Mariinsky Theatre in a 'very happy, beautiful, aristocratic family'. From her bedroom window in the 1960s and 1970s she used to watch foreign theatregoers turning up for the opera and the ballet in their finery, and prided herself on guessing their nationality: 'I loved the Italians best - all the women dressed like Sophia Loren.' The only access to fashion in her childhood was through dog-eared German mail-order catalogues from friends abroad. She would buy things from tourists for herself or to sell on. 'I remember a pair of button-down jeans and platform shoes,' she sighs.

In 1976 the family's Jewish heritage meant emigration was a possibility. Although the family was once wealthy and influential, this had all been removed after 1917: her paternal grandfather spent 14 years in the camps under Stalin. By the 1970s Verber's father just wanted her to become a dentist like him. 'Our life was comfortable in Soviet times - we had more than most people. But my grandfather wanted us to take the chance to leave.' Verber was sent to Italy to await her Israeli visa: she was offered a job in a shop in Rome and ended up staying. 'I couldn't speak English or Italian but I did know how to dress people.' She saved up and bought her first ever handbag from Gucci. 'All my life I never wanted to buy anything unless it was luxury,' she says. Her second bag came from Louis Vuitton, the third from Hermès.

She later moved to Toronto and worked as a buyer. In the late 1980s US and Canadian companies began looking to Russia as a market: Verber was drafted in as the only Russian speaker around. In 1993 she joined Mercury, returned to the motherland and threw herself into bringing luxury to Russia.

Her target audience is increasingly shopping on home territory in Moscow, she says. 'Before, people felt they didn't have any choice but to shop in London. Now we've proved we have everything here - and more. Year after year I hear people saying, "I went to Milan and couldn't get the right size - then I came back to Moscow and found exactly what I wanted." We are more expensive here - because of taxes and shipping - but if you have to take a plane to go shopping that costs more anyway.'

A few floors down from her office in TsUM a mother and daughter in matching floor-length fox-fur coats are hovering between Pucci and Malene Birger. The daughter makes a dash for a £2,000 marabou shrug from Brazilian label Daslu and the two caress it approvingly. Downstairs in the beauty hall - the largest in Russia - a Viggo Mortensen lookalike in a Ralph Lauren beanie is scrutinising limited-edition aftershaves. Increasingly Moscow stores like this have designer one-offs not available anywhere else in the world. Tom Ford plans to open two Moscow stores next year, featuring items like £2,500 custom-made suits only available for the Russian market. Manolo Blahnik creates shoes with higher heels specifically for his Moscow clients. On Tretyakovsky Passage the branches of Prada and Gucci have a bigger selection of bags and shoes than in Milan.

Around the corner from TsUM, snapping at Mercury's heels, is an emporium belonging to the terrifyingly ambitious Aizel Trudel. She struts into the store that bears her name wearing sky-high zip-up Louboutin shoe boots, a fur coat falling off her shoulders which a minion struggles to catch. She set up her own shop four years ago, at the age of 25, after persuading her cousin's husband, a banker, that it was a good idea to lend her $5 million. She repaid the loan with interest within a year. She now owns three stores under her own name as well as running outlets for Agent Provocateur and J Mendel.

Born in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, her father was a diplomat and she grew up abroad. 'When I decided to start out on my own, money was not the biggest problem. Of course you have to have friends with connections. My university - the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Affairs - was like Harvard: it gave you good connections.' She now lives mostly in London with her new husband Louis Trudel, 34, a Canadian architect and property developer who designed the Moscow stores. Her empire celebrates Moscow's new style ethic: 'Foreigners don't understand what it used to be like here. Fifteen years ago there was nothing but Versace. Now the taste level is changing tremendously - I sell Libertine, Proenza Schouler, Peter Som - before, nobody here knew them and nobody would wear them. A few years ago it was all about "total look" - that has changed.' Russian society girls mix Alaia with Oscar de la Renta. She says. 'Over here it's the young people who have money. Not people my mum's age. It's the 18-year-old students who have young money because they have rich parents or husbands.'

At Trudel's store I bump into Shakhri Amirkhanova, the exotic new editor of Russian Tatler which launches in April. She has just popped out in her lunch hour to pick up a few new pieces. She is a typical customer: international lifestyle (educated at Central St Martin's in London), young (28), pared-down modern style (she is buying a Prada tunic and a Vera Wang LBD). The new 'tasteful' look doesn't come cheap, though, and Trudel's store is a masterclass in stealth wealth: a £14,000 Loewe leather jacket, a £7,000 Vera Wang crocodile miniskirt, Stella McCartney knits for £1,600.

In the short term, opulence at any cost remains a Russian tradition, says Olga Mamonova. 'People don't think about tomorrow. They want everything today. It's not because we're materialistic. It's because we're romantics and idealists. If a Russian woman asks a man to give her expensive presents, it's not because she's materialistic, it's about reassurance and wanting to feel loved. In Russia that's genetic. And it won't change for two or three generations. There were so many boundaries in the Soviet era and once they were removed, people went completely over the top - and that hunger is not quite sated yet.' It's just becoming a little less brash and a little more cool.