Against frescoes painted over walls and ceilings, the lush furs stood out: an ankle-length sweep of sable, a snug chinchilla jacket with tiny bows, or the ultimate for the baroque Russian surroundings - a gilded and tooled leather coat reversing to golden mink.
As the falling snowflakes embedded Moscow in its long winter, a fur coat might seem a necessity rather than a luxury.
But while three Russian designers unveiled their glamorous wares in a fashion show at the State Historical Museum at Red Square, one of them had a different take.
"My mother couldn't afford a fur coat when I was young - so I don't see it as a necessity for keeping warm, I use it like any other material," said Igor Chapurin, who has used his Russian fashion house to bring creativity to fur.
That concept of stretching the imagination was the subject of the final session of a luxury conference organized by the International Herald Tribune in Moscow last week.
Silvia Venturini Fendi, a scion of the Italian family of fur, explained how she works with Karl Lagerfeld, who has been creative director of Fendi for more than 30 years.
"Karl might be inspired by the pattern of clouds he has seen from an airplane window or by images of a volcano erupting," said Venturini Fendi, explaining that she had childhood memories of her mother, one of the five Fendi sisters, laying out the furs treated to resemble volcanic lava on a table for Lagerfeld's perusal. Although the company was bought by LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) and became part of the French luxury group, it retains its experimental attitude to fur.
Russian customers choose the most edgy, daring and exceptional pieces, Venturini Fendi said, whether they are shopping in their own country or in Fendi stores at the Rome home base or in Paris.
Gilles Mendel from J. Mendel of New York is the seventh generation of a family of furriers who emigrated to Paris from Saint Petersburg after the revolution. Mendel opened a store last week on Stoleshnikov Pereulok, home to international brands like Chanel, Hermès and Louis Vuitton.
Mendel said that he, too, treated fur like fabric, making it ultra-light by mixing it with tulle. He offered the most luxurious, glamorous and expensive pieces in his all-white store, from sable coats to chinchilla scarves and knitted sweaters, one with a fair isle pattern in mink. The ritzy Russian crowd scooped up the furs like proverbial hot cakes.
Julien MacDonald, the British designer, claimed that making fur sexy was his secret of success. His aim was to control the volume, giving as an example fur with narrow insert panels of leather to shape a coat at the waist.
"No woman wants to lose her figure in a coat," Macdonald said.
At the fur fashion show, Chapurin's pieces stood out for their modern simplicity: sleek gilets worn over leggings, brief coats and other fur pieces cut on slender lines.
His fellow Russian designers, Ekaterina Akhuzina and Helen Yarmak, took a more lavish approach. Models with scarlet lips and upswept hair sashayed down the stairway as if they owned not only the luxury furs but the grand building itself. Reversible coats, each side as ritzy as the other, were presented with a whirl and a swirl.
The furs all carried the OA "Origin Assured" label, launched by the International Fur Trade Federation to bring transparency to the fur supply chain and reassure customers that fur is coming from countries that work to international standards.
The current favorite fur in Moscow is chinchilla - the perfect silver gray color to wear as a jacket over shimmering party clothes. The fur is light enough in weight to be shrugged over skimpy top and skinny pants, rather than surrendered to the coat check, making it a desirable fashion item.
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