Jewelled Yves Saint Laurent shoes that cost more than £1,000, crocodile Hermès Kellys with diamond-encrusted clasps and £55,000 price tags, limited-edition Gucci bags, mink-trimmed evening gowns and beaded Versace or Valentino couture frocks. This is what the wealthiest Russians like to wear — not just in Moscow, but in London, Paris, or wherever in the world they happen to be.

Russian taste has gone global, and not only because the Moscow jet set likes to get around. The Russians’ passion for all things luxurious is driving the world’s big fashion labels and single-handedly rescuing the luxury-goods industry from its economic mire — they are now one of the most influential consumer groups in the world. Five years ago, the idea of Louis Vuitton producing a bag trimmed with real gold and turquoise and costing £13,000 (as they did for spring/summer 2004) would have been unthinkable. But that was before the dawn of oligarch chic — a money-is-no-object approach that singles out the rare, beautiful and expensive.

Just as the Arab love affair with French and Italian glamour pushed the global expansion of fashion in the 1980s, and Japanese logomania fuelled the luxury goods boom of the 1990s (even today, one in three Japanese women owns a piece of Louis Vuitton), now it is the turn of the Russians. They have been avid consumers of luxury goods since the fall of communism in the early 1990s, but are fast becoming tastemakers in their own right. “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.

But the Russians don’t even have to come to London for the latest looks and labels. A rash of luxury-goods houses, including Dior, Chanel, Celine, Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci and, most recently, Burberry, has opened Moscow stores. Unlike the glittering but empty flagships in the other emerging markets of China and India, these Russian stores generate huge amounts of income for their brands. In 1994, Versace was the first big fashion label to open in Moscow, and Russia accounts for 10% of the total sales for the label.

“Just look at the Hermitage. No wonder the Russians like Versace — they like anything that is glamorous and ostentatious,” says the Russian-born Assia Webster, whose husband, the jeweller Stephen Webster, has opened a Moscow store. “But they are much more sophisticated than they used to be. They wear Chloé and Yves Saint Laurent and carry the latest handbags. Our customers in Moscow complain that we don’t send them expensive enough things. All our most dazzling jewellery goes to Moscow.”

Stylewise, it’s a far cry from the new-money brashness of the early 1990s Russians (all big hair, trashy clothes and outlandish furs). Today’s wealthy Russian shoppers are among fashion’s most well-informed and discerning. They are the ones who bring tear sheets from the latest magazines into the stores and seek out limited-edition bags, hard-to-get bikinis and hot-off-the-catwalk looks. “I believe the Russian customer is becoming increasingly sophisticated and therefore more open to all kinds of fashion,” says Giorgio Armani. “We sell more beaded evening gowns in Moscow than in many other principal cities in the world.”

At Yves Saint Laurent, the story is the same. “They want the most special pieces, the stand-out items,” says one insider. They go for the colourful and sparkly pieces, but also anything precious or limited edition.” Gucci’s Russian clients have snapped up its most glamorous pieces, including a £1,700 Swarovski crystal-studded clutch and a £2,280 shoulder bag dripping in gold fringe.

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.

The Russians may be hungry for high fashion and luxury, but according to the designer Antonio Berardi, whose extravagantly beaded and embroidered clothes have earned him a huge Russian following, there is one thing they don’t understand. “They don’t buy basics,” he says. “However sophisticated the customer has become, some things just don’t translate.” Anyone know the Russian for mink knickers?

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