You won’t have to wait long to spy a Russian, either. This year, their invasion of European holiday destinations is bigger than ever. They are to Europe’s jet-setting crowd what the German’s beach towels are to package-tourist hoi polloi. From Sardinia and St Tropez to Ibiza, Portofino, Monaco and Marbella, you can hardly move for high-rolling Russian biznismeni and their labelled-up wives.
“They’ve all just appeared,” says Beverley Bloom, daughter of the property tycoon Desmond Bloom, who divides her time between London and Monaco. “One minute, there were just a few Russians in the south of France, then suddenly, two years ago, they were everywhere. It hasn’t been gradual, it’s been a sudden influx.”
Last summer, at St Tropez’s colourful Club 55, Bloom saw her best-ever Russian outfit. “It was only lunchtime, but this incredibly beautiful Russian girl was wearing a full-length evening dress with full-on jewellery — diamond rings and a diamond necklace. For lunch! She was walking around as if this £3,000 gown from Dior was a sarong. It was so over the top.”
Of course it was. To the poolside Novi Ruski, understatement is a sign of fiscal weakness. They don’t just want to be wealthy, they want to be seen to be wealthy. This means full-face Lancôme reapplied at Chernobyl strength all through the day, lots of D&G, Versace, Juicy Couture and Roberto Cavalli, jewellery like Christmas-tree baubles, a large-faced gold watch and poverty-filtering sunglasses, all accessorised with the salt-mine rictus of grey-skied misery.
I had my own Ruskis-abroad experience when I visited the Rixos hotel, in Belek, southern Turkey, a few weeks ago. Decorated in Vegas-lite, Ottoman-overboard style, this beachside behemoth came complete with a Bellagio-type water feature, a cobbled-street shopping mall, a Troy-themed water park and a little village of expensive villas. The clientele was 95% Russian.
Southern Turkey is fast becoming the Novi Ruski Costa del Sol. Another hotel, the five-star Kremlin Palace, at Belek-Aksu, has even been designed to look like a Disneyland rendition of Red Square, complete with onion domes and a half-scale fibreglass Kremlin. The hotel staff speak fluent Russian and the vodka flows like Volvic. “One thing is certain,” said a fashion-stylist friend of mine as we sat and watched the endless poolside fashion show, “the boho-gypsy look is never going to catch on with this lot. I mean, why would they want to ape the style of poor babushkas when they have so much money at their disposal?”
Turkey, however, is just entry-level stuff for insatiably aspirant, cash-rich Russians. In the summer, the Novi Ruskis dominate Europe’s de luxe fleshpots, accounting for a significant portion of the high-end buy and rental markets on the French Riviera (where an appropriately appointed villa can cost anywhere from £15m to £40m), the Balearics and Sardinia. Aeroflot now operates a direct flight from Moscow to Nice, while local limousine businesses are booming (piloting a car oneself is considered déclassé — many rich Russians don’t know how to, or even care to know).
Anastasia Webster, wife of the jewellery designer Stephen Webster, was born in Russia and now lives in London and holidays on the Côte d’Azur. “On some beaches, it is literally 100% Russian, and at the hotels — the Byblos and the Eden Roc — virtually every bed has been booked by Russian families.” Stephen Webster, who has a busy store in Moscow, is considering opening an outlet in St Tropez. “But things are changing,” says Anastasia. “The really rich Russians, the oligarchs, aren’t so visible any more. They hide in the hills or on yachts and, because they are security-obsessed, drive low-key cars. It’s becoming more fashionable to be discreet.”
That said, if St Tropez offers a bit too much competition for the image-conscious Russian businessman, afraid of being lost in the crowd of yachts and chauffeur-driven Maybachs, a company called Russian Gold, which describes itself as a “VIP tour agency”, specialises in expensive trips to — get this — cheaper destinations, where ostentatious spending will be more readily noticed.
If you really want to get inside the holidaying Novi Ruski’s head, look no further than Denis Salnikov, columnist for The eXile (sic), a Moscow-based alternative newspaper aimed at the capital’s Western expats. Hugely wealthy, arrogant, decadent and shamelessly snobby, Salnikov is capitalist Russia’s most unwittingly entertaining diarist. During a St Tropez heat wave a couple of years back, he commented: “Luckily for us, my father’s villa is on the water, and we are not ashamed to use our air conditioner, so it wasn’t that oppressive, as it was for most of the French population, not to mention the common tourists. Many French people died in the heat, but I believe that this is because they are such cheap people. They chose not to buy or use air conditioners. What fools!”
Despite his preposterous conceit, Salnikov’s words go some way to explaining why the Russians are welcome visitors to Europe’s hot spots. “Along the coast, waiters and boutique owners prefer Russians to Europeans, because those people all count every coin and look for discounts,” he explains. “For the Russians on the Côte d’Azur, the French attitude towards money makes us laugh. We spend money freely because we don’t care so much. It doesn ’t make a difference to us to spend €100 or €1,000 on a dinner or on a new shirt, so long as we enjoy ourselves.”
HOW TO SPORT A NOVI RUSKI
What they wear The women: high-gloss, high-impact Eurotrash labels (Versace, D&G, Cavalli); make-up learnt at the Ukrainian hooker school of beauty; diamond earrings, bracelets, necklaces and, well, anything with diamonds, basically (she is not properly dressed for the pool without at least 400 carats).
The men: skimpy Speedos, worn high and tight to show off their impressive crotch equipment, accessorised with a sunburnt paunch and Soviet army tattoos.
Who’s with them An obese kid in surf shorts and a baseball cap, who they wish they had never had; a drunk old bird with a nuclear-red perm and a face like a sucked lemon, who keeps muttering something about Stalin; a bloke built like a Soviet nuclear silo, who seems to be talking to his sleeve.
What they’re saying Anybody’s guess, frankly. Just listen out for the telltale words: “Da” (yes), “Niet” (no), “Maya solnishka” (my sunshine) and “Ogromni brilliant” (huge rock).
