Ablack Chrysler Jeep pulls up at the kerb, around the corner from the Bolshoi Theatre. Two bodyguards scan the street. Then out step a woman and her daughter. Both with deep tans and dressed in designer clothes, they scurry into an upmarket shopping centre selling designer jewellery and haute couture.
Russia’s rich are embracing luxury goods with fierce abandon – as an antidote to drab years of mass-produced goods under communism and as a badge of wealth in a society now obsessed with money and status. In global terms, it is a small market. For luxury goods companies such as LVMH or Burberry, Russia accounts for about 5 per cent of sales. But it is growing too fast for the big names to ignore.
