RUSSIA’S ‘SPOILT BRATSKIS’
By Jeanmarie Tan
Electric New Paper, Singapore
Nov 13 2007
AMERICA has Paris Hilton and Ivanka Trump.
Britain has Tamara Ecclestone (daughter of Formula 1 mogul Bernie
Ecclestone) and Holly Branson (offspring of Virgin tycoon Richard
Branson).
And of course, Greece boasts one of the world’s richest women,
billionaire Athina Onassis, the granddaughter of the late shipping
tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
Now, the Russians are the latest to join this elite group of hot
young heiresses.
British newspaper The Daily Mail even coined a term for this new
phenomenon that’s gripping the former Soviet Union – Spoilt Bratski
Revolution.
Like their international counterparts, it’s not enough for the
daughters of Russia’s mighty oligarchs to simply sit pretty in the
lap of lifetime luxury and fritter away their family fortune.
Besides conquering the society scene, these modern princesses have
also made their names in fashion design, pop music and television.
With more than a little help from daddy dearest, of course.
RESENTED BY SOME
These party-girl celebutantes are constantly tailed by the paparazzi
and the flaunting of their wealth and success, splashed across tabloid
pages, has given rise to some resentment.
The girls – the first generation to have come of age after communism –
are even compared to the spoilt daughters of the tsarist nobility who
helped breed the envy which sparked the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
One of the members of the Spoilt Bratski Revolution is waifish Kira
Plastinina.
At 15, she’s been touted as the world’s youngest fashion designer
and is fast becoming one of Russia’s hottest.
She has 28 shops selling clothes for teenage girls and is also the
official costumier for the reality television show Star Factory,
Russia’s version of Fame Academy.
The funds to set up her own company came from her father
SergeiPlastinin, president and a major shareholder of food giant
Wimm-Bill-Dann, and worth an estimated £350 million ($1.1billion).
Plastinin also recently splashed out to make his daughter’s dream of
meeting US socialite Paris Hilton come true.
He paid a reported £1 million to fly Hilton to Russia to endorse
Kira’s new collection at Moscow Fashion Week two weeks ago, reported
Russian newspaper Pravda.
Hilton did her job of drumming up publicity for the teenager by taking
a front-row seat at the show and then sashaying down the catwalk with
Kira beside her.
The American heiress also splurged US$10,000 ($14,440) on clothing
and accessories during a highly-publicised visit to Kira’s flagship
boutique in central Moscow.
News channel Russia Today reported Hilton as saying: ‘I am wearing
her linen right now. She is an amazing designer at such a young age
especially. I really admire her.
‘I love her clothes. I want to wear these clothes in LA and I’m going
to give some to my sister.’
Bob Von Ronkel, president of the Doors To Hollywood company, told
Gossip Girls e-zine: ‘Kira is a talented young designer, her father
is a phenomenal marketing person.
‘Sergei Plastinin understands marketing like no one I’ve ever seen…’
Kira admitted that her father’s wealth and connections had made her
fashion career possible, but stressed that she wasn’t just a rich
girl looking for attention.
She told St Petersburg Times: ‘It’s not like I just went to my dad
and said, ‘I want a store,’ and he gave me a store with my name on
it and I don’t do anything.
‘I’m always coming to work, and my thoughts are constantly absorbed
in work. I always think about work, day and night. Sometimes I even
draw designs in school.’
Another Bratski whose father had a hand in bolstering her showbiz
stardom is 24-year-old Alsou Safina, an award-winning pop star who
is known as the ‘Russian Britney’.
Her politician father is Ralif Safin, founder of Russian oil giant
Lukoil. His fortune is estimated at £350million.
The sexy singer debuted in 1999 and has since released six albums in
both Russian and English.
EUROVISION RUNNER-UP
She entered the Eurovision singing competition in 2000 and finished
in second place, and even recorded duets with Latin singer Enrique
Iglesias and US rapper Nelly.
She also starred in the 2005 British horror movie Spirit Trap, which
bombed at the box office.
The Daily Mail quoted Alsou as saying: ‘Any parent would help his
child. I know that envious people keep calling me ‘a singing petrol
station’.’
She also once declared that ‘money is not a bad thing and finding a
way of spending it is not aproblem’.
Last year, Alsou married Armenian-Jewish oil scion Yan Abramov in what
was termed ‘the biggest wedding Moscow has seen yet’. It was attended
by the cream of the city’s celebrities, politicians, socialites and
even the mafia.
As a wedding present, Safin gave the couple a million-dollar Moscow
penthouse and a huge dacha (country house or villa).
Six months later, Alsou gave birth to a baby girl.
But probably the best known of the Bratski pack is TV star Kseniya
Sobchak, 26.
Her father is the late academic Anatoly Sobchak, former mayor of St
Petersburg and mentor to President Vladimir Putin as well as one of the
earliest advocates of freemarket reforms as the Soviet Union crumbled.
The limelight-loving ‘It’ girl became a household name by hosting
the hit Russian reality TV series Home-2, where she plays cupid to
the contestants.
Kseniya is Moscow’s answer to Paris Hilton, and no party, club
gathering or luxury boutique opening in the capital is complete
without her.
She is also the darling of Russian tabloids and considered the most
eligible bachelorette in Moscow.
Her blonde good looks and twisty love life land her on the covers of
magazines often.
But Kseniya is sensitive to the charge that her success is the result
of the Russian elite looking after its own.
She told The Guardian: ‘My job did not come without difficulty and
everything I have done, I did myself.
‘I am proud of my father and I wanted him to know that I was not only
his daughter, but someone myself.’
Kseniya, who has dated a string of millionaires, makes no apology
for her privileged lifestyle of conspicuous excess.
She told The Daily Mail: ‘I’ve got a kind of level below which I
would never go, therefore my circle of friends consists only of
wealthy people.’
She also has little time for jealous critics, adding: ‘It’s
understandable, especially in Russia where there are a lot of poor
people.’
She told the New York Times that she lives in ‘little oases of normal
Western lifestyle’, a remark that highlights the vast gap between
the newly-rich and the poor in Russia.
‘You go out on the street and it’s dirty. There are people and their
envy. It’s a lot of negative energy.’
Not surprisingly, in a country where one in four people still lives
below the poverty line, Kseniya’s words have caused deep resentment
and raised the ire of ordinary Russians.
Robert Service, professor of Russian History at Oxford University,
told the Daily Mail: ‘They are amazingly extravagant with an incredible
energy and zest, a bit like the very, very rich in 1920s America.
‘But they are both phenomenally popular and unpopular at the same
time.’
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