When Sloph went off to Moscow to learn Russian for three months, we told her we expected a blog. So far we have had a regularish newsletter which has been hilarious as well as informative. Now she is complaining that nobody answers it.
She only told me just now that she has posted the newsletters on a blog, Notes on Moscow, so now I can hopefully pass this on and she can get some comments, for encouragement.
UPDATE: a quick migrate from Blogger to Wordpress, now go here
Here's an example from the last post, on Russian manbags:
i've also realised that while i have commented on russian womens fashion sense, i have neglected to draw to your attention to russian male fashion and i feel the time has now come to introduce you to the russian concept of the manbag:
for many weeks when i was first here, i thought that russian men were simply very chivalrous and carried their girlfriends handbags for them. as the weeks went on though, i started to notice that men were carrying these bags regardless of whether there was a woman with them or not, and that in restaurants they dipped into them for their wallets and mobiles, forcing me to come to the realisation that they were in fact the man's own bag.
Requirements for a russian manbag are as follows:
1. the manbag should ideally be large, with a designer label on it (fake if necessary)
2. small bags are acceptable only if they are of the ladies evening clutch bag variety
3. diamonte, flower designs, shades of pink, and other embellishments are all entirely acceptable and even desireable
4. while across the shoulder varieties are acceptable, the usual choice is worn on one shoulder, in the crook of the elbow, or carried in the hand when the strap design is too small to allow for the arm to pass through it
5. although colour and designer labels are, as previously mentioned preferred, colour coordination with the rest of the mans clothing is not, thus allowing the bag to stand out even more in its incongruity. most common will be a particularly girly looking pink shoulder bag, with a gold chain shoulder strap, coupled with a leather studded biker jacket and army boots or alternatively, full business suit
6. under no circumstances are any of the manbags described above viewed as remotely gay, and if one were to suggest as such to the wearer, this would probably provoke a fight.
This seems to be a subject Carpetblogger should pronounce on, as she is the expert on Russian style and dyevotchkas.
