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Kira Plastinina is wandering around her first New York shop less than 24 hours before its opening. “I said I wasn’t going to come till it was open,” she says. “But I couldn’t wait. I was so excited.” She looks around. Armies of sales assistants are steaming stubborn creases out of shiny satin minidresses. “Tomorrow, I’m going to get the pinkest ribbon and the pinkest scissors,” she says.
On a flat-screen television are scenes from Kira’s brief career: Seven girls are aggressively mugging and vamping down a runway. “They’re the girls from Star Factory,” she explains. Star Factory is a Russian television show similar in content and popularity to American Idol. Kira designed the costumes for the girls and was a regular guest on the show, which, she says, was great for the brand. The runway show ends, and the video cuts to Kira holding a microphone. Her shyness is gone, and she is flipping her hair, tucking her chin coyly, and interviewing Paris Hilton.
Kira starts moving around the store, touching all the clothes and smiling absently. The vice-president for merchandising for Kira in the U.S., Ron Barajas, a middle-aged guy in jeans, sneakers, and hair gelled into a modified faux-hawk, follows closely behind her. She holds up a short, tiered miniskirt. “I love this,” she says. “But I can’t wear it to school because of my dress code.”
“It’s very directional,” says Rod.
“I like this vest,” says Kira. “It looks like a rainbow.”
“She expertly tailored the vest,” says Rod. “It’s masculine and feminine, so you’re like, Oh my God, wow.” He gestures to the seam. “I mean, where else are you going to see something like that?”
“See?” asks Kira. “A rainbow.”
On opening day, Kira made the store’s very first purchase, which she does every time she opens a store, for good luck, and then she climbed into the Escalade that had been squiring her around town all week and went to the airport: In Moscow, she had exams.




As befits a Russian girl with an American dream, Kira is planning to move to Malibu for the summer. By August, there will be twelve Kira Plastinina shops in the U.S., and Sergei Plastinin thinks it best that his daughter spend some time in her new frontier. (By October, there will be twenty more U.S. stores.) She is, after all, the brand, and how do you market the story of a 15-year-old girl when she is stuck in school in Moscow? Kira’s Russian staff will come to help out if necessary, but Higgins is currently interviewing American designers to fill out the Los Angeles design studio that Plastinin is setting up.
A stable has already been hired as well as a house on the beach. In between launch parties and work, Kira plans to work on getting her driver’s license, learning to surf, and perhaps navigating the precarious adolescent transfer of love from horses to boys, preferably surfer boys, which are in short supply in Moscow. She has already met Audrina from The Hills, who was “very sweet.”
“And I’m going to get a pig,” she says. “A potbellied pig.” She lifts up her shoulders and buries her chin. “Like a miniature pig.” She hugs herself for a minute and sighs. “It’s so cute.”
Her arrival in L.A. will be announced with a launch party and runway show two weeks after her 16th birthday.
A portion of Kira’s New York visit involved a serious planning meeting for the event at the midtown office of her publicists, who have laid out platters of cookies and fruit for the occasion. Kira munches on a chocolate-chip cookie and pays rapt attention.
“We’re inviting tastemakers, media elite, daughters of,” says one of the publicists.
“And sons of,” Kira says quickly, and then she blushes. Her phone goes off, with a loud, poppy ringtone. “It’s Mariah Carey,” she says of the song, digging sheepishly through her bag.
The party will be set up like a closet, a huge white-and-pink fantasy closet. Kira’s closet. Kira in Wonderland. Does Kira know about Alice in Wonderland?, someone wants to know. Of course, she says. “But my favorite part is the ‘kiss-kiss’ wall,” she says. The kiss-kiss wall is a place where Kira’s friends can write good-luck notes in pink marker. Pink lipstick will also be provided, in case her friends want to kiss the wall too. The party’s really big event will be a performance by the dimpled R&B star Chris Brown. “I want to watch,” Kira says, “’cause in Russia one of my favorite Russian singers sang at my fashion show and I was backstage working and I didn’t get to watch.”
“You’ll get to watch,” says one publicist.
“We’ll make a special spot for you, right on the stage,” says another. “Your grand entrance.”
“I want to come down from the ceiling,” Kira says, laughing, “into Chris Brown’s arms.”
She’s blushing again, but determined. It’s going to be the Sweetest 16 ever.






photos and story from nymag.com