Moscow's Tagansky Protected Command Point, a 22-story underground nuclear bunker built by Stalin in 1951 and rumored to have been ground zero during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, was the unlikely venue for an "underground" fashion show recently staged by a Russian label known as White.Trash.For.Cash. Two thousand of the city's fashion throng crowded into the gritty hideout, where it was said that Communist chiefs could have survived for three months in the event of a nuclear holocaust. One of the group's designers, Maxim Kushnaryov, said the choice of location was "a political statement," and served to "show our opposition to the whole fashion scene in Russia." Today, the venue is being converted into a chic bar, movie theater, and spa, set to open later this year as "an expensive development in thematic Cold War style."
Though White.Trash's look veered toward a latex-heavy American Apparel aesthetic, chances are the new club at the Tagansky bunker will soon be overrun with Svetlanas draped in Versace and Igors sporting Tom Ford's velvet slippers. And isn't that a fitting, apocalyptic ending to nuclear detente?