Vika Andreyanova is a designer who shuns haute couture that is designed to garner “oohs” and “aahs,” never to make it out of the closet again.

All the world’s top designers are known by their name alone. And one of the fastest-rising names in Russian couture is thirty-three year old Igor Chapurin.

She is a young, blond Russian tennis star. And she is not Anna Kurnikova. In fact, Yelena Dementieva, 19, seems the very antithesis of the publicity-seeking, endorsement-hoarding Kurnikova.

Impressionists have long been popular in Russia. But for a long time now, “top-level” impressions have been, well, less than challenging. It didn’t take a superior comic to parody the Southern accent and sing-song intonation of Mikhail Gorbachev, even less so the slurring baritone of Boris Yeltsin.