Does it make sense when somebody wishes you Happy New Year and Merry Xmas?

Of course it does!

Does it make sense when somebody wishes you ONLY Happy New Year and nothing else?

In Russia, or in the ex-USSR, it does. Since 1917, Bolsheviks had a hard time re-writing the culture and traditions.They could not eliminate Christmas altogether, therefore they created New Year (two in one) – New Year with Christmas traditions, without baby Jesus and nativity scene.A little bit of history)

Traditionally, New Year’s Day in Russia fell on September 1, which ended Russia’s tax year. In 1700, in an attempt to westernize the country, Russian ruler Peter I moved the holiday to January 1 according to the Julian calendar. Therefore Christmas fell on the 7^th of January (if you translate Julian into Gregorian calendar and New Year fell on the 14^th of January by the same logic. Russia was 13 days behind the world, but the proper sequence of events was preserved.

The New Bolshevik Russia started using the Gregorian calendar in 1918, leaving the Church, which kept its Julian calendar by 13 days behind.

Between 1919 and 1937, the Bolsheviks banned public celebrations of New Year’s Day, calling it a bourgeois holiday. It became a non-labor day again in 1947. The Christmas traditions became adopted as New Year traditions. Santa Claus with its Russian equivalent of Grandfather Frost and his granddaughter Snegurochka (Snow Maiden girl) slowly became adopted into New Secular Year traditions.

The Christmas Eve became New Year Eve. The presents were left under New Year Tree (read Christmas Tree) or exchanged at 12am on New Year Eve. Christmas itself, on the 7^th of January became a non-event. Communism won, but so did secularity. The New Year was embraced and celebrated by everybody religion withstanding. For better or for worse, Jews, Muslims, Russian Orthodox, Catholics celebrated New Year with a real gusto. Even Ramzan Kadyrov (a President of Chechen Republic, the one who approves Isis) remembers with nostalgia the Grandfather Frost, who turned out to be his uncle coming from the next village to bring the children presents.

Which religion are we talking about anyway? The “Opium for the Nation” (Definition of Religion by Lenin) was abolished in 1917. If Communism as an idea gets buried forever, deservingly so, I want to have only one thing left  – New Year celebration as a unifying celebration.

I would love to celebrate Hanukkah, but having had no Jewish religious upbringing, I am also a stranger to my own celebrations. My religion was interrupted through three generations. I don’t know Hebrew and believe me, English translations of Hebrew prayers, don’t make sense. If I were back in Russia, I would be like a fish in the water – New Year and no mistakes, lots of room to wiggle, no traditions to understand. There was also a tradition in USSR enjoyed by every kid from the age of 5 till the age of 13. There were New Year performances in the theatres, Houses of Culture, local clubs. At the end of the performance the kids were given little presents containing chocolates, mandarins!!! (in the middle of winter), waffles and many other yummy treats.

But I am in Australia and that’s how it is. We give presents for Christmas for our Christian friends and for New Year for our Russian friends. At the same time I appreciate the fact that we are so free to celebrate anything we want, that every religion has its niche here.

One strange thing about Australian New Year is the hot weather. For the first year in Australia I resented the hot weather, I missed winter, frost, snow, the atmospheric feeling of a “proper” season. Having lived in Moscow from 2005 till 2012, I realised there was no proper season. Who would miss the Moscow fireworks only seen from the Red Square or from the tall buildings around, which are not many. Who would miss the snow treated with special salt to make sure the snow looked like an undercooked porridge? Who would miss obligatory ceremony of taking off their shoes and putting on the “tapochki”/slippers when entering Moscow apartments for celebrations.

But I still miss Russian New Year – the hot beautiful food, the numerous TV shows lasting for 24 hours, the presents given by Grandfather Frost (The Most Non-Drunk Male at Midnight – pretty hard task) and the children promising this Grandfather Frost that they would behave so well next year, that they deserved all of the presents given to them by Most Non-Drunk Male at Midnight. Russians or rather ex-Soviets do the same here and we enjoy it very very much. Having Russian TV handy is a good and cheerful help.

Since our parents died and there is no 1^st of January lunch and dinner visits (soon I will start stealing my granddaughter for the 1^st of January), 1^st of January for the last 4 years feels for me like a 24 hours long flight on the plane. No care in the world, you feel you are in a certain time capsule where everything is taken care of.

I start my 1^st of January with a splash in the swimming pool, cutting the Russian salad (nobody tells me how to cut or what to put there – many variations) and with a bottle of champagne. Reading, watching Russian TV, what could be better than this? That’s the only hedonistic day, I allow myself once a year. And every year I hope the time capsule would take me to the better places…

In 1988, when we were staying as refugees in Rome, we managed to get to St Peter’s Cathedral to watch midnight Christmas Mass. It was the most beautiful singing performed by the boys’ choir and the most amazing feeling there. One felt that something magical would happen after the Mass finished. And it did. We came out to absolutely transformed Rome. The were 2 or 3 snowflakes in the air, the night was so starry, the most beautiful women wearing unseasonable mink coats were coming out from the houses with the most handsome men wearing long cashmere coats,  with the most beautiful children all laden with presents. Everybody were saying to us “Buon Natale”. Everybody was happy. Obviously their Grandfather Frost arrived just in time…Long live traditions! The most beautiful ones, of course.

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This is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places on earth, and virtually any building in the large historic center, threaded with canals dotted with baroque bridges, can be considered an attraction—and indeed, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. This is a magical city, with a long list of major attractions. Its Hermitage Museum, housed in the Winter Palace of the Romanov Dynasty, is both one of the world’s greatest and oldest collections of art, treasure, and antiquities, and one of its most beautiful buildings.

If it was my first time to visit St Petersburg, and I did it now, in 2014, as a foreigner, I would say wow!!! – “Such a beautiful city, placed in the middle of a very different looking country. It is a Venice of the Northern Europe, no more and no less!”

Summer and Winter Gardens, Hermitage, Peter and Paul Fortress, it is a Disney Land of the 18th century Europe, no more and no less.

I was born in USSR in 1960 when St Petersburg was called Leningrad. In the annals of history we studied, St. Petersburg had been the capital of Russia. The Government was overtaken by The Temporary Government in February 1917, the city was renamed Petrograd in the proper Russian way. It was later, overtaken by the Bolsheviks on the 25th of October 1917. It was renamed Leningrad to commemorate the most loved leader of the working people. Is that it for the history of St. Petersburg?

I will tell you the story from the point of view of a very little girl who grew up in USSR, who was familiar with the officialdom of the history of the country, who knew nothing better, than to trust in the open and to doubt in hiding, who learnt studiously the history and tried to discover the facts behind the lies.

Leningrad to me, was a dream, to finally come true. When I was 12, my school chose the “chosen” ace kids to go to Leningrad school for an exchange for two weeks. I don’t know, what my city of Belgorod could offer for this exchange, apart from the warm weather, but an exchange it was.

We went in a bus via the outskirts of Moscow (Moscow Outer Circle Road), through one of the oldest cities of Russia, called Novgorod (New City, no more no less, of 1220 AC), and straight to the city centre of Leningrad. The ride lasted for two days. When we approached the city centre of Leningrad and we saw the most beautiful cake/bread shop, we behaved in all honesty like a herd of wild tigers let free by Putin into China (not so long ago). The people in the queue asked us whether we were from Moscow, in the same way people from San Fransisco would ask a rude misbehaving person in a supermarket queue, whether he was from New York. We settled in the old school gymnasium, and after two days of riding on the bus, we fell in the thick of the sleep slumber. Straight on the floor mats which was a plenty. For 5 consecutive days we had dozens of excursions all of which, tried to reconcile the history for us with the history of communism, via the history of Peter The Great, who built the city on the swamps in 1703, via Decembrist movement (first aristocrats-rebels) in 1825, via the serfs liberation reforms in 1861, via the first failed revolution in 1905 and via the second successful revolution in 1917…Via relocation of the capital to Moscow and via the siege of Leningrad which lasted 3 consecutive years – from 1941-1944 inclusive. These 5 days gave me my first sense of pride – I saw the most beautiful city in the most beautiful country in the world.

These 5 days inspired me for the rest of my life to look for a beauty in my life, to find a place to live, which was not anymore offensively ugly. Forget Western Siberia, and Belgorod (a little after that, I lived in Moscow, Roma, Vienna, and …Sydney).

My second visit to Leningrad happened during perestroika, in 1986. It was in January, in the coldest January since 1941. Coincidentally, it was 45 years since the start of the siege of Leningrad. I was sent to study some obscure accounting software for some obscure computers made in USSR. It was bitterly cold in the dormitory of the University of Finance where we all stayed. But it was the time of perestroika, and the genie of the evil spirit of Stalin was let out the bottle. Leningrad, once again, became the vanguard of everything progressive. We went to the concerts of “Time Machine” (Mashina Vremeni – prohibited in Moscow), to the lectures of Vitaly Korotich , the editor of “Flame” (Ogonyok), the most readable and the most progressive weekly edition in USSR. The old age communists whistled and booed him at this lecture.

We listened for the first time to the Poem “Babiy Yar”, prohibited since 1960-s and read by the Soviet poet Evtushenko. And look, we were not arrested. It was another country, elevated by hope and by love to “thy” neighbour.

My third visit to Leningrad happened after Putin came to power. He is also from Leningrad. By that time, the city was called St Petersburg. It was a rather neglected city, aged beyond belief, but nevertheless beautiful. It gave away an impression of past glory and not so much of the future. The new cafes and coffee shops, however, were bursting with life and witty interiors. The canals were frozen, the winds were strong, the bridges were the same – I counted them again and again. But the Hermitage desperately needed renovation and the buildings looked like they also needed a facelift.  The main feeling was that the decadent, progressive city evolved into a city chained and waiting to be released when the time was right.

Yet again it became the city of Gogol and Dostoevsky, depressed and physically unwell.

Since the early noughties, St Petersburg became more radicalised, more homophobic, more racist…For the Russian people to become racist, there needs to be a heating from inside to the point of explosion. When there is no steam outlet there, the kettle whistle never whistles. It is called displacement in psychology.

A little bit of history:

Saint Petersburg was founded by Peter The Great, on May 27 1703. Between 1713–1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the imperial capital of Russia. In 1918, the central government bodies moved from Saint Petersburg (then named Petrograd) to Moscow. It is Russia’s 2nd largest city after Moscow with 5 million inhabitants..

Saint Petersburg is often described as the most Western city of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of the City constitute UNESCO protected cultural site.(8000 monuments are UNESCO protected). Saint Petersburg is also home to Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world.  Louvre and Hermitage are still competing for this title.

Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport (“window to Europe”), so it could trade with maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Archangel, which was on the White Sea to the north and closed to shipping for months during the winter.

During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan. By 1716, Domenico Trezzini, had created a project, where the city centre would be located on Vasiliyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, and is evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716, Peter the Great appointed Jean Baptiste Alexandre De Blonde as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg.

In 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernise Russia had met with opposition from the Russian Nobility —resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his son. In 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna Of Russia, Saint Petersburg was again designated as the capital of the Russian Empire. It remained the seat of the Romanov Dynasty and the Imperial Court of the Russian Tsars, as well as the seat of the Russian government, for another 186 years until the October Revolution of 1917.

In 1825, the suppressed Decembrist Revolt against Nicholas I, took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after Nicholas assumed the throne.

The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces.

On 1 September 1914, after the outbreak of WW1, the Imperial government renamed the city Petrograd, meaning “Peter’s City”, to remove the German words Sankt and burg.

In March 1917, during the February Revolution, Nicholas II abdicated both for himself and on behalf of his son, ending the Russian monarchy and over three hundred years of Romanov Dynastic Rule.

On November 7, 1917 (Julian Calendar, October 25), the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, stormed the Winter Palace in an event known thereafter as the October Revolution(there was not much to storm, to tell you the truth), which led to the end of the post-Tsarist provisional government, the transfer of all political power to the Soviets, and the rise of the Communist Party. After that the city acquired a new descriptive name, “the city of three revolutions”, referring to the three major developments in the political history of Russia of the early 20th-century.

During World War II, Nazi Forces besieged Leningrad following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The siege (“blokada”) lasted 872 days, from September 1941 to January 1944.The Siege of Leningrad proved one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Lagoda. More than one million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped, so the city became largely depopulated. My own father’s auntie survived the siege, but died 10 days after from the consequences of food deprivation. Shostakovich dedicated his longest and the most famous 7th symphony to Leningrad and the people living under the siege. It was completed in December 1941 and is called Leningrad.

In 1960 they opened Piskarevsky Memorial with the words engraved at the entrance:

“From the 8^th of September 1941 till 22^nd of January 1944, there were 107185 bombs dropped at the city from the planes, 148478 of live ammunition, 16744 people were killed, 333782 wounded, 642803 persons died from starvation.”

There is a permanent heartbeat of the metronome upon the entrance to the cemetery. The diary of Tatiana Savicheva whose whole family died from starvation during the siege, is displayed in two pavilions of the cemetery. The diary is eerily similar to the diary of Anna Franck. Maybe all human suffering is eerily similar?

The wars and revolutions, this city lived through, makes it one of the most suffering city in the world. And yet, the soul of Leningrad is not destroyed.

It might have hardened, bit it lies in waiting for the winds of freedom coming its way…See you soon, one of the most beautiful cities on Earth…

My love, my youth, my dream 

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When I first entered the holy grail of Potts Point it was in 1994 – Holiday Inn was on Macleay street, where Icon Building is now. I was supposed to be studying Project Management course there, but instead I was studying Potts Point.

For 4 days we had coffee breaks at the hotel with incredibly bitter burnt coffee, and I tried to see the glimpses of the suburb, which has taken my heart since and never let my heart go. There were tree-lined streets (like in Europe), there was an incredible Bookshop, which, unfortunately, closed its doors only a month ago. At the time, it had the books translated from all the languages from all over the world. The shop reminded me the bookshop in Verona in Piazza D’Erbe. There were little cafes with an outdoor chairs (like in Europe) and rather roguish looking pubs on Darlinghurst Road. I walked to Woolloomooloo and saw, – OMG – Navy Ships in the middle of the city. After visiting Sebastopol in Ukraine (sadly Russia now), which had about 10 military zones, before you could spot any ships, the feeling of openness was amazingly liberating. The whole buzz was of European city, patchy somewhat, but still of European city.

Of course, there was the City, 5 km away with its skyscrapers and dusty palm trees.

The City had no feel of Europe and no buzz.  It had sterile looking office workers, lunching strictly between 12pm and 14pm, and dispersing back to their suburbia every night.

I thought to myself – what would persuade my then family to move to Potts Point? Nothing would….

I tried… I moved there after my divorce…(I must say, that divorce its not a liberation – it is an opportunity to make your own decisions without consulting the other half, for all right and wrong reasons)… and I intend to stay here, I think, until eternity. My second coming to Potts Point happened when my friend Maree told me to visit one of the shops there. Maree’s opinion mattered the most (she had a beautiful perfume shop in North Sydney at the time). Only because of her, I first entered the kingdom of Macleay on Manning. I became addicted to its Limoges cups, to Fornasetti plates (the real ones), to little cards, and candles and cute presents, which looked like gifts from Paris in Vaucluse (where I lived then).

I became addicted to their owners Rod and Jill, too). Then Arida spruced up in the lower end of Macleay, followed by Bekker and Minty across the road from Macleay on Manning, followed by Blood Orange in Elizabeth Bay.  Forgive my historical chronology, if I made an omission there and then, but Potts Point became a shopping Mecca with a twist. Even the little laundry with a duck image in Elizabeth Bay, which looked so Dutch, was like an omen – I felt compelled to move there. In all honesty, its not my Russian community area, it does not have big houses with the swimming pools, it does not have this comfortable Australian dream/suburbia feel. It has a feel of all night Parisian entertainment maybe in not so glamorous arrondissements.

It is a perfect suburb, my Potts Point, for its great restaurants and great shops but it has very little space for development and growth. The car owners are treated like pests and are surrounded by Tow Away signs at every mm of the Potts Point. When you find a parking space, or if you are in the luck, and don’t get a ticket, if you parked illegally, you feel as fortunate, as you would be feeling, when winning 1 million dollars lotto.

The car drivers are persecuted in Potts Point as the dogs are persecuted by Woollahra Council – Parsley Bay, for example has signs – Dogs Are Totally Prohibited – fine 500$.

With so much to give to Sydneysiders, in terms of culture, shopping and food, Potts Point started shrinking back to the embryo it has been before…Something needs to be done, the long awaited cinema needs to be built, the watershed between Kings Cross and Potts Point need to be eliminated. The undercover parking next to Woolworths needs to be built, something urgently needs to be done to Potts Point to allow it return it to its own glory, and at the same time to make it livable for the residents, and accessible to the visitors. As for me, I will be around I will wait.

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When I got the invitation to Taipei in Style Fashion Week I was over the moon. Taiwan for me, was always the land of electronics, nano technology, but fashion?

Taiwanese fashion was a complete enigma.

It was not something, which would come easily to my mind.

From what I learnt in history – I also imagined the island of Taiwan in permanent state of uncertainty and resistance to Chinese rule. Maybe, but when 2 planes landed from Shanghai and Beijing at the same time in Taipei airport? When there is one plane per hour flying from Hong Kong? I started to have serious doubts.

Fear, resistance – no! Uncertainty of the status quo, – maybe…

We arrived very late in the night and we did not see the city – it simply looked ordinary. In the morning,  we did not have an opportunity to see it again – we walked for what felt like eternity in the sauna of the local weather. Mild spring of +40 degrees and humidity of 100%, made my asthma come back sneezing and wheezing, until the miracle of Ventolin came with Chinese language instructions.

Taipei Fashion Week for the first time invited international buyers and it was held in the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.

This location has transformed through history since 1937 as the “Taiwan Sōtokufu Tobacco Monopoly Bureau” during the Japanese colonial time, and after restoration, it was taken over by the Taiwan Monopoly Bureau and renamed the “Taiwanese Provincial Tobacco and Alcohol Monopoly Bureau Songshan Plant”.
The concept of an “industrial village” was employed during the initial development of the Songshan Tobacco Factory, and besides the production line, the benefits and needs of the plant’s employees were also taken into consideration for the design of the site. With its large open spaces and courtyards, the site was a pioneering design for industrial plants at that time.
Its architectural style belongs to the genre of “Japanese Early Modernism”, with emphasis placed on horizontal lines, simple classic shapes, and refined workmanship.  Since nobody told us about the most beautiful surroundings of the Fashion week, I assumed it was a school, which could not be further from the truth.

Well, back to the Fashion week.  As the potential buyers/bloggers we had to give a survey of 20 booths. As every new Fashion week it had one big handicap – the prices were unjustified. Most of the shoes and accessories were produced in Mainland China, most of the styles were last season. It was quite disappointing.

The shows were very long and sometimes were accompanied by the famous Taiwanese singer starting and finishing the show. The styles were not very original, the quality of the garments were not at the top of the quality chain ((. In general, I thought Taipei in Style fashion week was a budding rose, which will become beautiful in time.

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We all know only too well that jewellery encrusted with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds costing millions apiece tends to moulder away in strong rooms, deposit boxes and various other safe places, either waiting to be put up for auction or for an executor to dispose of the estate. Only a little of it is lucky enough to see the light of day for longer than when it was on the jeweller’s workbench.

The idea of costume jewellery appeared in the 20^th century. It was out of the question to manufacture jewellery from precious stones and metals twice a year for every new collection because of the eye-watering cost. Fashion houses weren’t ready to take risks like that or for that sort of expenditure. On top of that, for the exact same reasons jewellers tried not to experiment with design and produced things that they were certain would sell. That didn’t suit fashion designers, who were keen that every new garment should take your breath away. The exception was items produced for private family collections. Non-precious materials came to their aid. Initially faux jewellery was made in the form of mock-ups exclusively for closed shows intended to bring out or complement some outfit or another. The client had the opportunity of commissioning from the jeweller whatever had taken her fancy, to be made in accordance with the mock-up, only this time from precious materials. Soon both designers and clients realised that the mock-ups weren’t at all bad in their own right and the materials and stones that were used were simpler and easier to work, which allowed for new heights of design to be scaled.

Jewellery from non-precious materials made a bashful entrance to fashion at the beginning of the 20^th century, along with the new wave of designers who followed in the wake of the fathers of haute couture, Worth and Doucet, and by the 1920s it had firmly established itself in the fashion pantheon thanks to celebrated couturiers of the day. 

After that there followed a period of oblivion since for two decades Europe was immersed in a far from peaceful time of wars and revolutions. Women’s clothing of that era did its best to look like men’s and representatives of the fair sex were preoccupied by matters of social equality to such an extent that they forgot who a girl’s best friends are. Then in the late 1940s Christian Dior reawakened the interest in costume jewellery, which had fallen sound asleep, with a passionate kiss from the New Look. The market for costume jewellery reached its height in the 1950s-70s when it became an indispensable part of any fashionable look. Things had taken a different turn by the time the 1980s came around, although that decade also left its mark for all the right reasons.

Throughout the 20^th century a huge number of people, both talented and less so, have longed desperately to inscribe their name and as indelibly as possible on the wall of honour of costume jewellery. But in my view there are three names that will always stand out – Robert Goossens,Gripoix and Jacques Gautier. 

Up until the 1980s, nearly 60 percent of all costume jewellery was made by these top designers, from the sketch designs right through to the finished product. For several decades YSL, Chanel, Dior and a host of other top fashion houses worked with them. Most of the items that this trio produced are to be found in private collections and are true designer pieces by a designer with a capital ‘d’. Many of them were produced to a limited run of no more than 10.

The veteran of this Stakhanovite drive in costume jewellery was the maison YSL, but that takes nothing away even from those products of theirs, which had the longest run.

In order to work out which items to buy and what’s hot property the first thing you need to do is to get a proper sense of what has got you interested in faux jewellery in the first place. If you just want to keep pace with a trend, plain and simple, although in a way that’s anything but, to draw gazes of burning envy and to be able to elicit the odd question like “Where did you get that?” or “What’s the brand?” then buy something from the 1980s or early 90s – large stud earrings by Gripoix, say; geometrically patterned fashion jewellery by YSL made of plastic, metal or non-precious stones; crosses or long ropes from Chanel by Goossens of brass and drops of coloured crystal. If you want to delve more deeply, then look for the work of less well known producers. Although it’s not easy, it’s worth making the effort to track down the designer costume jewellery produced independently by Isabel Canovas,who used to work for Dior. 

Her work – executed in a thoroughly ethnic style using warm metallic tones and semi-precious stones – is for card-carrying connoisseurs of costume jewellery. If it’s for your own wardrobe, then don’t be shy about buying unsigned pieces – they often yield nothing in design and may be one-off items by famous producers. 

Opportunities to buy costume jewellery at auctions such as Auction Atrium, for example, don’t come up that all that often and the ultimate cost will be fairly high. You’re better off looking out for closed sales where private collections are being sold off cheap and you can pick up real masterpieces for a very nice price. If you have the time, it’s worth setting aside a few days or even weeks for poking around antiques markets. At the better known ones such as Saint Germain-des-Prés in Paris and Portobello Road in London you’ll pay more, but at the less famous ones on the outskirts of Brussels and Lille the prices can be pleasantly surprising. Get talking to your fellow browsers and you might get an invitation to one of those very same closed sales of private collections. If all this has engendered a desire to set up a business or invest money – as opposed to just seeking aesthetic enjoyment – then buy Art Deco jewellery from the 1920s and 30s such as Lanvin or else 1940s or Art Nouveau or Liberty jewelery.

Buy jewellery made from large crystals, of complex natural and mineral hues. A scattering of rhinestones arranged with superb artistry may sometimes weary, but will never fall in value. Check that the item has the manufacturer’s stamp, is signed on the underside or has a certificate of authenticity. If you’ve decided to cast caution to the wind, then try your luck buying costume jewellery on Ebay: it can often work out substantially cheaper, but remember – there are no safeguards against counterfeits or defects. Making a purchase on Ebay is like internet dating: it’s quite possible that things won’t go any further than the initial approach, you don’t have any opportunity to make a close inspection, you need to prepare yourself for possible disappointment and you have no recourse if something goes wrong. Then again, it’s entirely possible for every one in five purchases to be ideal. Basically it’s a lottery. If, in spite of everything, you’ve decided to go with internet shopping, then try www.beladora.com, an on-line dealer in antique and estate jewellery, as there are more guarantees to be had here. And if you do, then I advise you to be in Beverly Hills where the head office of the firm is located on the day when the sale goes through as it will make it a lot easier to return anything or to exchange the goods if that proves to be necessary.

In Russia and the USSR there was no culture of costume jewellery as such and so for the moment there are few people with a proper appreciation of the magic of this art form and, more importantly, the ability to use it for peaceful ends. Both in their own country and abroad, Russian clients are as taken aback as they always used to be and turn up their noses when they hear that something is made of materials somewhat different from the more familiar gold, platinum, rubies and diamonds. Few of them realise that rare pieces of costume jewellery can cost more than normal fine jewellery. So you have every chance of becoming a highly fashionable aesthete and connoisseur, who doesn’t just follow trends but sets them. One piece of advice: try not to wear vintage faux jewellery with vintage clothing if you find it difficult to know when to stop, as otherwise there’s a high likelihood that you’ll end up looking decked out like a Christmas tree. Play it for contrasts. Then again, there’s an exception to every rule.

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