If there was one thing we learned on our recent inaugural trip to Moscow (don’t worry, we will be back), it’s that Russian women, the ones we met at least, take their wardrobes very, very seriously. This isn’t meant to be a sweeping generalization—but the fact is, every single woman who we photographed on this trip had an entire room, or more (a room, not a walk-in) devoted to their clothes. And their shoes. And their bags. And their jewelry.
This was certainly the case with Ekaterina Mukhina—and then some. As soon as we walked into her central Moscow flat, we were greeted by a rack of fresh off the runway CHANEL, Prada and Louis Vuitton. And that was just what she planned to wear for her portraits. Then again, Mukhina knows what she’s doing. The woman has styled countless editorials and covers for Vogue Russia as the magazine’s first fashion editor, as well as a freelance stylist, along with a slew of other international Vogues; having worked with photographers like Karl Lagerfeld, Patrick Demarchelier, Ellen Von Unwerth and Sebastian Kim. Yeah, she’s in that club. (Not to say she hasn’t branched out, though—Mukhina keeps a blog about that very special relationship between mother and daughter inspired by her own with her stunning doppelgänger daughter.)
It kind of goes without saying that that first rack was only the double-C engraved tip of the iceberg—because Mukhina’s room stuffed full of racks on racks on racks (literally) of individually plastic-wrapped clothes was still ahead of us. (We get it, when Valentino dresses are the norm, you want to keep your pieces clean.) She was also quick to lead us to a trove of vintage costume jewelry where the amount of CHANEL was, frankly, overwhelming. The luckiest person in this situation? Mukhina’s daughter who has a serious wardrobe coming her way, leading us to ask own mother’s for the millionth time about why exactly they never got around to collecting CHANEL themselves.
