Russia, April 15, 1998
All Black is Russian Fashion
Russians have an odd fashion sense
Russian Fashion
By Nick
Three days ago one of my Russian staff came to breakfast with her hair down. It was really long, all most down to her butt, and very wavy. This struck me as unusual because I could not remember her having long hair. Later on during the day I was talking to someone else and standing right above her. I was looking down at her hair and I noticed that the hair close to the head was jet black and the long hair was brown, NOT JET-BLACK. Needless to say that the next day her hair was short again. I can only imagine how many people noticed this repeated changing of hair length. I thought that I would not be that surprised by Russian fashion again for a long time.
I was wrong . . . . . . .
The weather has finally gotten warm here in Siberia. Wednesday was the first really nice day. The temperature was about 78 F. I know I really loved it after being 45 F, or less, for the last two weeks. It even snowed twice.
Well the local citizen went all out by striping down to the smallest articles of clothing they had. I was walking around the parks with a Russian friend drinking a few beers and enjoying the wildlife (young girls - young ladies to you Americans. Just so you do not think I am chasing after 13 year olds. They are all at least 14 and a half.) Any way I was totally surprised when I saw a young girl wearing a very see through black negligee as a dress. She had on a black bra and panties and this negligee over the top of it. Then of course she had black high-healed shoes and a black purse. She looked just like she was going to go out dancing in a short mini-skirt. She probably thought she was looking real good. Oh well life here really sucks having to stare at things like that.
30 April, 1998
Miss Ekaterinburg
By Nick
Last night I went to the Miss Ekaterinburg Beauty Competition. Ekaterinburg is one of the larger cities in Russia with about 2-3 million people. I must be honest I went to the competition just to watch the girls. However, I was very pleasantly surprised. The show started just like I would have imagined, there were two spot lights being manually moved around the closed curtain, very unprofessional in nature. The curtain opened and there was a young girl of about 6 dancing a ballet. Later an adult woman came out and they danced together like two forest fairies. The dance was very good but normal.
Then, the 29 contestants were introduced, one at a time. They came out in their street clothes and this was exactly what I thought it would be like, seeing as how Russia is a poor country. Some girls were wearing ultra short mini-skirts, some shorts that did not cover their whole buttocks and others skin tight black pants. It looked more like a beauty pageant in a bar than anything else. All the girls wanted the audience to see exactly "what they had".
After this they had the Russian Latin dance champions perform and then two young children of about 6 danced after them. These performances were very excellent with great lighting from above the stage. Then the girls came out in swimsuits. I was surprised that all swim suits were the same style but different colors. I would have thought that each contestant had to buy their own stuff but this was not the case. (With Russian fashion mentality it would really have been a show if they bought their own swim suits.)
One of the most popular rock and roll singers in Russian sang a few songs with a back up dance team of two men and women. They were dressed all in blue and were really quite good. After one of the songs by this famous Russian singer, a man brought flowers onto the stage. This is not unusual for Russians because flowers mean good performance or thank you. However, the flowers were not for the singer they were for the lead male dancer. The singer did not mind at all and made the comment, "The dancer's color (blue costume) is not indicative of his sexual orientation". The word for the color blue is the same for "gay" in Russian. So the singer made a really good joke and assured the audience that this dancer was not homosexual.
Then the girls then came out in evening gowns and each was wearing gorgeous diamond necklaces. They all looked radiant. After wards their was a short fashion show with exotic looking clothing. The pageant went on for a while with singing, dancing and fashion performances.
For the fashion performances, they had a runway that came from the stage into the audience. The people's heads in the first three rows were at about the same level as the runway. During one portion of the show they were asking people from the audience what they thought about the show. They asked one man in the second row what he thought and he said that if you were not sitting in one of the first rows you really were not seeing the whole show. (In case you cannot figure out what he meant, he had to look up at the girls to see them and he was seeing more of them than they probably wanted.) They whole audience roared with laughter because they had thought the same thing also.
I skipped the parts about reducing the competition to five girls but for the grand finally the 24 simi-finalist came out in wedding gowns. Then the five finalists came out in new evening gowns. They were all lined up across the stage with the five finalists in the middle. Then a local flower company provided flowers for each girl. What a beautiful picture, 24 beautiful women in wedding dressing and five finalists all holding flowers.
This would have been the perfect scene to declare the winner. However, the Russians have learned a little too much about capitalism. Each and every company who wanted to get some adverting came out on stage and presented the girls presents. By the time the presents were done, each girl had 2-3 bouquets of flowers, 2 packages of cosmetics and a small handbag. Some girls received stereos, one a TV, some jewellery, two large stuffed animals a vacation trip and who knows what else.
So all of this crap was lying all over the stage and the girls looked liked they had just robbed a store, they had so much junk in their arms. Now after all of this was over they declared the winner. Two men had to come on stage to move the junk so she could walk down and receive her crown.
All in all the show was great. It was better than the ones I have seen in America. The entertainment was excellent and the production quality, other than the very beginning, was great. This whole thing lasted about six hours, so this was really an event.