August 11, 2013
A Cinderella Story
After her rescue from a Russian jail, Elena Perminova is living a modern-day fairy tale as couture's newly crowned It girl. Plus, see the fashion shoot.
By J.J. Martin
Strolling to and from the fashion shows in Paris's Tuileries Garden, the gaggle of Russian style stars is impossible to miss. They are the girls with the delicate gaits, fierce cheekbones, and high-fashion clothing so newly minted, it practically sizzles on their skin. Whether the wives of billionaire businessmen, the offspring of oligarchs, or politically connected czarinas, they are keeping couture afloat as the new haute clientele. (Some of Karl Lagerfeld's more extravagant Russian clients will buy 35 Chanel ensembles in just one season.) As fearless as they are chic, these It girls look like lab-made female specimens dreamed up by designers in their sleep, and street-style photographers, with a nose for what's next, tend to swarm around them like flies.
At the center of the paparazzi frenzy is 26-year-old Elena Perminova. The longtime companion of Russian oligarch and billionaire media magnate Alexander Lebedev (whom she met under circumstances so unreal, they seem fit for rags-to-riches folklore) and mother of the couple's two small children, Perminova is often photographed with high-profile pal Miroslava Duma and clad in something that appeared on Chanel's, Mary Katrantzou's, or Giambattista Valli's runway just hours before—and the photo goes viral on thousands of blogs before igniting insanity across Instagram. Fashion fanatics deconstruct Perminova's epic looks with scholarly precision: Draped over her cigarette-thin H&M jeans is a neon-lime-striped fox fur by the designer Helen Yarmak, while a burgundy Maison Michel felt fedora and Repossi earrings offset the punk edge of Balenciaga's buckle boots. "It's exciting when people around the world meet for one week and introduce themselves through their clothes," says Perminova over an alfresco lunch at Palazzo Terranova, the 18th-century estate in Umbria, Italy, where she and Lebedev vacation in summer. "Fashion is loud-speaking." With milky skin, flaxen hair, and knife-thin legs that seem to sprout directly from her rib cage, Perminova appears completely at ease in this fairy-tale setting. But the story of how she arrived here is more dramatic than anything Danielle Steel could have imagined.
Born in Siberia, she had humble beginnings. "Siberia wasn't depressing but it was cold, so I wore a lot of fake cheap fur," says Perminova, who is now an ambassador for Chanel. "We didn't have a lot of money. We were a simple family." When a bad-news (and much older) boyfriend came along, she found herself unwillingly dealing Ecstasy in Russian discos at age 16. She was soon arrested and sentenced to six years in prison, at one point confined to a tiny jail cell, about which she has said, "There was a stinking toilet and no soap … [and] an iron bed clamped to the wall." Perminova's father pleaded with Alexander Lebedev, then a member of the Russian parliament, to come to her aid. He did—and not long after, the pair fell in love. "I was so young," Perminova says of her dark past. "I was blind—completely." She is grateful to Lebedev, who not only rescued her from a life of ruin but also introduced her to a world of unimaginable privilege. "He was my angel," she says. "There is no other word for it."
With his neatly cropped gray hair, wire-thin glasses, and trademark sneakers, Lebedev, 53, looks more like a chess grand master than a billionaire tycoon. And his story is no less intriguing than Perminova's. A onetime KGB operative, he made his fortune in securities trading in the 1990s, and in 2006 he took an unexpected turn—championing political competition and freedom of the press. Along with former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, he bought a 49 percent stake in Novaya Gazeta (one of the only newspapers in Russia willing to expose corruption and criticize those in power), and a few years later he purchased the U.K.'s London Evening Standard and The Independent. In 2013, it was Lebedev who found himself on trial, for assaulting a businessman during a nationally televised debate. He was charged with "hooliganism motivated by political hatred," an offense that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. (The charge, according to speculation, was fueled by his open opposition to Vladimir Putin, now Russia's president.) "I'm under serious surveillance," Lebedev says. "Putin doesn't have any opposition; if he sees anyone as a threat, he nips them in the bud. My trial is like that. It's not by chance." (In July, Lebedev was convicted of battery and sentenced to 150 hours of community service. He plans to appeal.)
But all that seems like a world away among the orangeries, olive orchards, and tall cypress trees casting shade on this remote slice of Italian countryside. Today the couple's four-year-old son, Nikita, is being chased around Palazzo Terranova's velvety grass. The boy looks as carefree as his casually clad father, who pads around the property—which he discovered 10 years ago and faithfully restored—in sweatpants and running shoes. (Lebedev is known for being a patron of crumbling architecture throughout Europe.) In the morning, the family is taking a private jet from Perugia to Paris, not for champagne on Avenue George V but for a trip to Disneyland Paris so that the children can meet Mickey Mouse. Afterward they'll jet between their home in Moscow, a 16-bedroom château outside Paris, and an 18th-century manse in London's Hampton Court Park.
Even with his drawn-out legal battles, Lebedev remains cool and calm, clearly enjoying Perminova's unlikely but meteoric rise to international style star. "She's got a very good sense of proportion about it all," he says admiringly. "It's not like she's losing her mind over this." Which would be easy to do given the glorious homes, the gorgeous clothes, and the front-row seats at couture shows. But despite the lavish trimmings, Perminova is sunny and sweet, without a trace of pretension. "My day-to-day wardrobe is rather modest; I prefer to collect books rather than clothes," says Perminova, who has a degree in economics from Moscow State University. She also prides herself on being a doting mother. "They're my 'everything' boys," she says of Nikita and one-year-old Egor.
But an offbeat sartorial destiny always felt somewhat inevitable to Perminova. At age nine, she dyed her hair blue, and when there wasn't enough money for designer denim, she glued rhinestones onto her old jeans. That innate DIY sensibility—along with a razor-sharp intuition for the perfect mix of high and low fashion—only grew as her world expanded. "On my very first trip to New York, Alexander said, 'Please go to Bergdorf and buy something,' but I was so impressed by the clothes, I couldn't make up my mind," she recalls. "So I bought jeans and wore them with his hooded sweatshirt and his huge Stephen Webster cross. [While I was] walking around, everyone looked at me—and I started to understand what I wanted and how this outfit was best for New York. But I could've bought a Dolce gown!"
Soon enough, designers and photographers were flocking around Perminova, who made her high-fashion debut by stepping out in a slashed Rodarte sheath at a CFDA event in 2008. Giambattista Valli was an early admirer, snatching up the beauty first as a model and then as a front-row guest. Now there are more than 155,000 people on Instagram who are mesmerized by every style move she makes. "It's a bit like a magazine," Perminova says of her posts, which range from playful portraits against the candy-colored cathedrals of Moscow to sultry boudoir snaps in sweeping lace-appliquéd gowns to pleas for shoe suggestions to match a brightly checked Vuitton shift.
Part of her appeal is that she pulls off outfits that no one else could dream up, be it a plaid shorts suit with an oversize fur-trimmed houndstooth coat by Tommy Hilfger or head-to-toe geometrics by Valli. But she's just as happy in Zara as she is in Givenchy—she'll pair a casual Kenzo tiger sweatshirt with, say, minuscule cutoff Levi's.
"Russian style has changed a lot," Perminova says, "and thank God. In the past it was so much about labels. Everyone wanted to show that they were rich. I never liked that." Fashion has always been a way to express herself, whether with sequins in Siberia or haute couture. "When I was nine, everyone wanted to be a princess at Christmas, but I dressed as a baby chicken. I realized it was important to have a personality. Otherwise you'll be lost in the crowd."
