So, Roman Abramovich is officially the richest person in Britain, according to today’s Sunday Times Rich List. He is worth a not too shabby seven and a half billion. Pounds that is, not roubles.
The Times has taken the opportunity to offer an expose on the lives of Russia’s super-rich who flock to London at this time of year…
The top London stores are predicting their biggest bonanza since the January sales. Between them the Russians are expected to spend £15m in the capital. For the rich Russians, April in London has become as much a part of their “season” as the winter skiing in Courchevel.
The Russian elites, (including Deputy PM Alexander Zhukov, Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin and Anatoly Chubais) it seems are here for a conference. Their wives, meanwhile, are expected to do the shopping and, at the same time, redefine style in the early 21st century…
“What the Japanese were to the 1990s, the Russians are to the Noughties,” says a spokesman for Harvey Nichols, which has seen applications for its in-house credit card from customers with Russian postcodes double in the past year.
Over at Hermès, Russians want the best that money can buy, too. “If it comes in suede or lizard, they’ll take the lizard,” says a representative. It’s no surprise, then, that the LVMH labels Celine and Louis Vuitton are running special customer evenings just for their London-based Russian clients. No other nationality is being targeted in this way, and at these private events, fur, crocodile and cashmere are top of the shopping lists.
Of course, not all Russians are rich. The thoroughly working class Guardian did its own piece earlier this week, dispelling a few myths. Mainly that not all Russians drink Vodka. There are actually over 40,000 people from the former Soviet Union living legally in the UK today. And most of them are most definately not super-rich.
In the “work required” [classifieds] there are almost 200 ads from Russians seeking jobs as cleaners, nannies, carpenters, labourers, waiters, cooks and private tutors.
The British media’s obsession with Abramovich and Berezovsky and the rest of the Russian mega-rich irritates Lena. “I have no association with any of these people, and neither do any of my friends,” she says. “You hear Russians saying ‘at last we have our football club [in Chelsea].’ Bullshit. I don’t dress like them and I never will. Lots of Russians don’t fall into any Russian stereotype. There’s lots more of them in London than these rich Russians. These people, they don’t speak English, they don’t understand English culture, they’re a completely different breed, and that’s what the English press is writing about. Not us, the people who accept English culture but are still Russians.”
You know, I’ve lived in England for almost 30 years now, on and off, and in all that time I’ve only ever met one Russian. She wasn’t rich. But then, neither am I. She was, however, much better dressed than I am…
- What next?
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