Moscow

Soviet officials wanted Maroon to move the 1967 Leningrad shoot to Moscow. He refused, but agreed to a second shoot that year in Moscow featuring fashions by Soviet designers, and LOOK agreed to publish it. The shoot included designs by budding Soviet designer Slava Zaitsev.

 

Photograph made in the Annunciation Cathedral, which is now a museum within the Kremlin walls. The long red dress by Slava Zaitsev takes its inspiration from the red-robed saints in Andrei Rublev’s famous icons. The sleeves are copied from the boyars, who covered their hands to show they did no manual labor.

In a Stalin-era Moscow Metro station, Ludmilla Romanovskaya and Augusta Vikhrova wear colorful wool suits designed by Russia’s promising Vyacheslav (Slava) Zaitzev. They are at the Kiev stop, decorated with bright mosaics and massive chandeliers. Zaitzev says ancient wooden architecture inspired the scallops on the hems of the jackets.

Golden coach: Wool-chinchilla coat with fitted Georgian silhouette, designed by Taisaya Kuchinskaya. Gilded 18th Centery carriage in the Kremlin’s Armory Museum.

GUM is referred to by cosmopolitan Russians as “the Macy’s of Moscow”. It’s an elegant pre-Revolution structure that has been converted from arcades of individual shops to a bustling dispenser of currently available consumer goods. GUM queues snake up and down staircases as Russian shoppers wait for the end of the line to discover what in fact is being sold that day. Nadja, the model, has created her own queue of watchers.

Sputnik Museum. Scale model of Vostok, the Sputnik that has carried solo cosmonauts form Gagarin to Tereshkova into space. Regina’s red jumpsuit is stretch gabardine with separate hood, and decorated with nailheads.


A party in a private home in Moscow.

Red Square.

A couple in a theater inside the Kremlin.

Another moment inside the theater inside the Kremlin.

Ludmilla in Galia Gagarin’s mini-length silver dance dress strung with pearls, gets a potselui (Russian for smooch) from Sasha Mironov, a student at Moscow’s Textile Institute. They meet in the dining rom of the gargantuan new Hotel Rossiya, where a dance orchestra switches between Western pop and traditional Russian music. The hotel was built to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. It is located just below Red Square and can accommodate 6000 guests. Americans sometimes call it the Comrade Hilton.

Fashions by Slava Zaitsev at the Moskva River with the Kremlin in the background.