From SIBERIA, With LOVE!

So does it happen to you? Like whenever the name of a place is uttered a certain image appears in your mind? For me it seldom happens. 

Let's play the game. What comes to your mind when I talk about “Siberia”?

Huge stretches of land, meandering road with patches of ice, snow-capped long ranges. Something like that? Well, yes! Siberia is full of black and white beauty. Black rocks, white snow, black sky, white skin. Yes, you read it right. Skin! And that too white.
This essay is not about the nature. It is about the skin that’s ruling the world.

After the long drawn Cold War and the fall of Soviet Union, Russia has been the centre of abomination in many respects. Be it burgeoning military prowess in the business of power, unwarranted sanctions from UN, ententes with notorious polar powers and many more. But one sector where they had been the next best supply in the global market is Fashion industry. Better to put in a different set of words “Fashion and its allied industries.”

Let’s try to visualise another picture from Krasnoyarsk, the third largest city in Siberia.
A beautiful aisle of a huge palace-like communist architecture. Almost 100-110 girls, each in their black coloured undergarment, standing in that aisle, side by side, looking towards the huge windows on the northern wall of the building. Each of them seems to be very restless holding on a piece of a4 sized paper with something written on them in Russian. The girls were from the age 12 onward but no one of them exceeding 16. Today three agencies from Krasnoyarsk have organised this casting meet for Asian clients from Japan. Out of 100-110 girls only 10-11 will be selected and a few especially for the Japanese assignments.