Maria: Moscow becomes a battlefield for mass market and high fashion

Moscow has always been one of those places where  top luxury brands made huge profits,   but this time things went way too far.

I'm sure  you're all familiar with Lanvin for H&M collection. Obviously it was a huge success in Moscow like in any other city and made a great deal promoting Lanvin  among Russian customers...well, we thought it did...

Apparently,  Lanvin tried it's  hardest to make H&M not to bring the collection  to  Moscow and even though it caused a strong resentment from H&M's side,  they  did reduce the quantity of  items that were brought to H&M store in Moscow.

I'm sure you're wondering why  a fashion brand that has nothing to do with mass market would do something like that ? Well, the reason  for it, is  that Lanvin doesn't want to be associated with H&M in the eyes of Russian customer. In times of a financial crisis there're a very few places where people buy luxury products in a big quantities and Moscow is one of those places. Lanvin was scared that Russian customers of the brand will feel like Lanvin  is going in a more affordable direction and as a result will stop buying it.

The reason for those concerns is not only the collaboration with H&M but the fact that sales of Lanvin in Moscow were dropping like crazy, for example the amount of sales in 2010 was only 2.2 millions of euros, comparing it with the  year 2009 when it was 3.19 millions of euros  we can see that the brand is not doing well. 

So, what do you think? Was all that fuss necessary? 

And there is something else that i want to show you guys, it also evolves around Moscow's fashion scene.

The cover of Vogue Russia,  January 2011 issue.  Do you recognize anything?  Yes, The Balmain dress  aint going nowhere ) i'm just gonna keep on counting the number of covers )