Bet on red

“Probably my greatest success is collaboration with Christian Louboutin. We are great friends, we often call each other and meet. I remember when I celebrated my 30th birthday in Paris, he prepared a surprise for me. I invited only those closest to me - my mother, several friends, Sati Spivakova. Christian took us to a Vietnamese restaurant and constantly hovered around me - this would do, then that would do. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and then it turned out that he needed to discreetly cut off a lock of my hair! For what? He made shoes for me from plastic, under which he placed my curls and photographs that were memorable to me. It was such a gift!”

Left: top, skirt, everything - Marc Jacobs; shoes, Carven. In her hands is a Marc Jacobs jacket. Right: Sweater, Jonathan Saunders

Necklace with brooch pendants, Oscar de la Renta

Oscar Award

“I have quite a lot of hoodies from democratic brands - they are so comfortable! Bright blue and yellow necklace - Oscar de la Renta. This designer always dressed the first ladies - Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton. And I met all of them at his receptions. I was especially impressed by Nancy Reagan - a very elegant, well-groomed woman, as if from another era.”

Dress, Azzedine Alaïa

“Azzedine Alaïa’s long dresses were at one time only in his couture collections. And for the first time he made a floor-length dress for a commercial line - I immediately bought it. By the way, Azzedine and I have been friends for a long time - every time I’m in Paris, he invites me to visit. The most interesting people always gather with him, and the designer himself bakes fish in sea salt. We communicate, even though he doesn’t speak English - Azzedine often calls me through his secretary, asking how I’m doing, how the children are. A very unusual and sincere person!”

For the love of art

“I really love the film “Slave of Love” - Nikita Mikhalkov shot it based on the material of the artist Rustam Khamdamov. He is a rather private person, but one day I finally got to his house and saw his paintings. In the end, I persuaded him to make a drawing, which we placed on bags, the facade of our store and sweatshirts - now this is the symbol of Aizel Moscow! And Libertine designers Cindy Green and Johnson Hartig, whose dress I wore with a sweatshirt, were at my husband and I’s “mural” in the Moscow registry office. We invited a few guests, and they were just in Moscow - and so it happened!”

Fashion can do without luxury - after all, it is in both TopShop and Zara. Luxury without fashion also, in principle, feels good. In New York, for example. Here comes the uptown girl - with a ponytail, beige trousers, a blue jacket and a Birkin bag. And wherever there is “old money”, there are older women with well-coiffed hair and white tights. They are also luxury, and what a luxury they are! This is a lifestyle - vintage cars, expensive cashmere sweaters, closed educational institutions. But not it-girls. It-girls are a passing phenomenon, but luxury is a classic.

But fashion is more interesting. Although it is more difficult. She always offers something, and you have to constantly choose based on your mood and complexion. I try to look at myself from the outside – very honestly. After all, fashion is changeable, I will never catch up with it, this is an illusory world. But you can have time to take something from her for yourself. At the age of 17, I began to understand how it works. I did PR for the Russian Gold company. At the shows in Paris, I looked at who came in what, what they combined with what. This is also education. It’s not for nothing that fashion magazines exist.

Clothes are a way to present yourself appropriately to the situation. Therefore, the dress code hovers above both fashion and luxury - it is much more important. If I know that today I will have a meeting with an official at the mayor’s office, for example, I will dress in accordance with the “business suit” dress code that he understands. I'm not going to impress him. And I remember that for a man, a “well-dressed woman” is not always an “expensively dressed woman.” It is enough if he thinks: “Here comes a young business girl.” But the suite has its hidden signs. The most striking example is Queen Elizabeth's bags. By the way her Launer bag stands, you can understand what's on the old lady's mind. If she puts it on the floor, it means she is ready to communicate. If the bag is on the table or on your lap, this is a sign “The conversation is over!” Birkin also gives signs - it reports the income of its owner. There is no need to be ashamed of this; in Russia these are the rules of the game in business. In life it also happens that the last money is spent on a bag, luxury bluff is a good trick, many people use it. Clothing is a tool that gives confidence.

But I have a special form of business, so I follow fashion in almost any situation. And if I didn’t work in the fashion industry, I would still dress the same. Women are more interested in fashion. There is too much purity in the suite, in my opinion. And in fashion there is a nerve, it is a very unstable environment - but girls are emotional, they are like fish in water in such an environment.

For now, fashion is closer to me. Maybe this will change with age, but not a fact. My mother opted for luxury, but I belong to a generation that absolutely does not want to be an adult. And luxury is still a very adult story.

Novikova Inna 05/30/2012 at 11:00

Aysel Trudel, the owner of elite boutiques in Moscow and a representative of famous European fashion brands in the Russian Federation, Christian Louboutin, Agent Provocateur, Diane von Furstenberg and several others, visited the Pravdy.Ru video studio. The publication's editor-in-chief Inna Novikova spoke with her about fashion, Russian wives and men, helping children and her new projects.

- Aysel, I want to start our conversation with a strange ranking of the best Russian wives who worthily represent their husbands in the West. Anna Kournikova, Olga Sviblova, Natalya Vodianova took part in the rating, you took first place. Please tell us what the phrase “a Russian wife who worthily represents her husband in the West” means?

As far as I remember, it was a rating from Harper's Bazaar magazine. It was a revelation to me that my husband and I took first place. They came to film us in Sardinia in the summer. I was just pregnant. Italian journalists were filming Russian girls who were married for foreigners. My husband is Canadian. But he lives between Moscow and Monaco. His parents moved to Monaco many years ago. He has a development company in Monaco, some in Moscow.

- What did you need to do to get into this rating?

I don't know, to be honest. According to Harper's Bazaar magazine, we were included in this rating.

- We have written a lot about the fact that mixed marriages are more complex than internal ones: a different mentality, a different upbringing, a different perception of even the most common everyday problems. Have these differences affected your family? By the way, where were you born?

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I was born in Baku. My parents were diplomats and traveled a lot. Since the third grade, I lived constantly in Moscow, then it was still the Soviet Union. I graduated from MGIMO. As for the attitude of foreign men towards women, I can absolutely say that foreigners treat women as an equal half, as a worthy member of society.

-Are you comparing with Russian men?

Yes. And with the Azerbaijani ones in the first place. Foreigners give you more freedom and allow you to be who you are, they don’t violate your rights, they don’t put pressure on you, they don’t say: “No, don’t work, look after the children, don’t take a nanny.” That is, they allow a woman to realize herself fully, if there is such a need. I have such a need. I can’t help but work, I can’t sit at home. I have been working since I was 16 years old. It was very important to me that this side of me would not be infringed. There is also this point: when a woman is strong, when she has character, then not all men like it. My husband and I have been married for over seven years. Fortunately, I have not yet experienced pressure from my husband even once. On the contrary, he supports all my endeavors.

- When you married him, did you already have fashion boutiques?

Yes, they were. When we met, he took an active part in the design of these stores. I took on quite a serious amount of work - everything related to design, rental, construction. His companies directly adjusted many projects, and they differ from the general level in Moscow.

- Because they are Canadian?

Because they are simply different. The specifics of a multi-brand store are very different from a mono-brand store. There are from 70 to 80 brands in the project, all of them have their own character, all of them have their own direction, which changes from season to season. If the interior of this store is very loud: for example, you make a red ceiling, or red curtains, or some very bright wallpaper, customers begin to get lost. Therefore, when we opened the store, the task was to create a comfortable, cozy space in which all brands would coexist, in which there would be no distractions and customers would be able to focus their attention on things.

- In fact, most likely, the success of any store depends not only and not so much on the interior. What is important first of all is the manager, the owner of the business... You are a young woman, but already quite an experienced, well-known person in this market... How did you get into this business?

I traveled a lot. I went to France, America, England, Italy, went to different stores. I always wanted to do something in Moscow that has never happened. I wanted to bring designers to Moscow, I wanted to show our people things that we had never seen.

- Why “we never saw”? The Iron Curtain fell 20 years ago.

The Iron Curtain may have fallen, but I wanted to show young brands that you can experiment with, I wanted to show people how they can be combined... I don’t want to say that I’m the first to do this in Russia, but, for example, Marc Jacobs, We brought Stella McCartney and many other European and American designers to the Russian market for the first time. This all happened about ten years ago. Naturally, the initial reaction was ambiguous: people took a closer look - they were used to wearing Gucci, Prado, Dolce Gabbana and Versace. But some kind of evolution has begun, and today the brands we brought are advanced.

- Besides travel, what other components of your success are there?

- We have one iron rule - the client is always right. Unless people who come to the store get personal and start insulting the sellers. We work in the service industry, and our task is to make people happy. It doesn't matter whether they bought something or not. The goal is that once they come to our store, they always want to return there. Today they have no money, but tomorrow they do.

In general, it all starts from the moment you order the collection: how you deliver it on time, how you imagine it, how sellers sell it, a lot depends on pricing. This is a kind of complex.

The work of salespeople is a psychologically difficult job. They account for 50 percent, in my opinion, of the store’s success, because these people communicate with customers, broadcast their attitude and mood. We are all living people, we have problems, we have good and bad days. And we try to train sellers to leave negativity behind the store doors, to be positive towards customers, to tell them the truth (what is really suitable, not to force things), so that people come back and become our regular customers.

- This is the most important argument - the client is not the one who bought something from you, but the client is the one who came to you for the second time. But how to find, prepare sellers, how to make them love customers? It seems like a simple task, but very difficult to complete.

Our employees are motivated by their salary; this is a very good salary according to the market. We all work for ourselves, financially. All sellers have a personal percentage of sales. Plus the mood, a healthy atmosphere in the team. I myself spent a very long time going to other stores, watching how they served me. I found my leading sellers this way.

- Did you go to other stores and take those you liked?

Yes, this is the market, this is normal, everyone does it.

- What if they come to you?

They come and try to entice. Someone, in very rare cases, leaves. Again, this is the market.

- You said that the work of a salesperson is psychologically difficult. Do you conduct any training with your staff?

Of course we do. Recently we were commissioning a new project - an online store, and the question arose about creating a call center. Since our product is exclusive, we set ourselves the task of finding specialists for the call center among the sellers. We have selected the best, with a pleasant voice, those who know how and love to communicate. So they were trained...

- So they will work both as salespeople and in a call center?

They will combine - this is also sales, only sales via the Internet. I believe that the task here is even more difficult, because clients from the regions cannot come to our boutique, try them on, touch them. We basically planned all this for those living in the regions.

Over the past three or four years, we have received a huge number of calls and letters from completely different parts of Russia with a request to open an online store. We have been nurturing this idea for a long, long time. Still, we decided to make a separate project from the store.

On the site we pay great attention to styling. We take very detailed photographs of each item so that you can imagine it completely accurately.

- A man comes to the store. The participation of a seller who can advise is very important. The thing hangs on a hanger, looks great, but when you put it on, it turns out that you’re not wearing it very well. In an online store, you can’t touch, or listen, or look in the mirror...

Well, you can listen, that’s what the call center is for. In addition, there is always the opportunity to return the product. Of course, buying online is riskier because, as you say, it is impossible to try on. But, according to the law, people have the right to return the goods within two weeks. In addition, before placing an order, our specialists always call and find out in great detail the features of the figure, which models people prefer, how they sit on them.

- Please tell us about how representatives of various leading brands and designers came to Russia at your invitation.

For example, we made an interesting exhibition at Garage together with Dasha Zhukova. It was a joint art project between David Lynch and Christian Louboutin. David presented photos of Christian's abstract shoes, which, of course, cannot be worn. The project was a great success in Europe and around the world. About 15 photographs of David Lynch were sold to collectors from Russia.

He is a director and very rarely takes photographs, so this project is exclusive, connected, on top of everything, with fashion. David has been friends with Christian for a long time, they have been nurturing this idea for a very long time. When I was in Los Angeles, the three of us discussed over dinner how we were going to do this. There was a huge presentation in Paris and Los Angeles. I really wanted to bring these works to Russia. And the reaction in the Garage was amazing: people walked and watched for a long time, they liked it.

The second project, which I think is also successful. In 2010, together with Olya Sviblova, we organized a huge exhibition in Manege. Diane von Furstenberg, one of the world's leading fashion designers and private collectors, brought her entire art collection, including works by other famous designers. Plus, we agreed with Moscow State University, and she gave lectures to students at the journalism department. It was such a success, you can't imagine.

We really want to repeat this. First, second, third courses - they just sat and listened with their mouths open, the applause lasted for 40 minutes, they didn’t let her go. She is an interesting, charismatic person. She is 62 years old, yet she is infectious with her energy. And you feel ashamed when you say that something hurts you or you don’t have the strength... I want to be like her. She is not a feminist, but she believes that women should have an equal position with men in society. Diana is the only woman in the world who was able to make both of her husbands, being gay, marry her. Her husband is one of the largest businessmen in America. There are 15-20 families in America that make up the elite, their family is one of them. Her husband is associated with Hollywood, with many production companies, including Paramount Pictures.

- How did you manage to bring her here?

I met with her in New York and said that I would like to represent her in Russia and maintain a long, fruitful, friendly and working relationship with her. It took me a long time to convince her. Diana wasn't sure that a young girl like me wouldn't let her down. She set quite difficult tasks for me.

By the way, she brought the wrap dress into fashion history. America is not easy to conquer, but she still conquered it. At the age of 18, she was already on the cover of the New York Times. This also says a lot. She is one of the first women to dress America in dresses, introducing the culture of dress.

- You talk about the culture of dresses, Aysel... It seems to me that in America there is still more of a jeans culture.

In America, there is also a jeans culture; they are mainly worn on weekends. I'm talking about women who work. Diana's main task was to create complete clothing for every day for secretaries, office workers, and corporate employees.

- I know that you would like to show our designers to the West. Apparently this is still a dream? In general, how far are we from them? What prospects do our young designers have?

There is a very great need for some Russian designers, such as Gazinskaya, Terekhov. When creating the website, one of our goals was to use our platform to promote Russian designers abroad. Unfortunately, not all designers today have the opportunity to upholster complete collections, export them abroad, rent hotel rooms, or sell them in showrooms.

Russian fashion is in its infancy. We have individual designers who are helped by business structures or financiers, they are sponsored, but there is no single center within which they would be connected with each other. It seems to me that Russian guys, our designers, have very great potential. We started selling Gazinskaya in the store, they react very well to her, she is a very talented girl, she is ahead of the curve...

- What does “get ahead of the curve” mean?

She uses very interesting prints in her designs, which many other designers around the world are picking up.

- Our girl from Russia, who does not have the opportunity for serious promotion, creates a vector?

Our girl from Russia is the only Russian designer who began selling in the Parisian boutique "Colet". There is an opinion that the designers who are sold at Kolet are at the peak of popularity today. If you get into Kolet, it means that everything is fine with you and your career will develop. Gazinskaya herself is a very pleasant person. I sincerely wish her all the best.

- But what are the chances for our designers to get into the best Parisian and other boutiques? Was Gazinskaya just lucky or is this some kind of pattern?

I think that somewhere she was lucky, somewhere it was her long and hard work. She is traveling abroad. Unlike many other designers, she has this opportunity. She exhibits her collection at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Many famous bloggers wear it. She has very bright prints, recognizable things. And in dresses and suits from her penultimate collection, with parrots, only the lazy did not appear.

- And yet, what advice can you give to young people on how to get to the West, how to become recognizable? Just don’t say that you need to work.

We definitely need to work. For my part, I can say that we are looking at a lot of designers. We will have about ten more young designers whom we will present on our website. If possible, we will try to exhibit these collections in large showrooms.

Although sometimes the task is not to get to the showroom, but to produce and ship on time. Not everything is simple with our exports either. It is very difficult to produce things in Russia and send them for export when you have production here.

- Isn’t it easier to order and produce in China, and then deliver from there very quickly?

To produce in China, you need volumes. If your volumes do not reach a certain turnover, then it is not profitable to produce in China. And then, we have wonderful tailors, wonderful fashion designers. In America, for example, you come to a huge block, 15 people are sitting: one embroiders, the other cuts. Everything is the same. There's just a bigger market there.

- Do we make fewer clothes than in America?

No, but they have a certain government program that supports young designers. I am also trying to make efforts so that we finally have such a program. This is the face of your country. It’s always nice when our champion gets a medal, when Russia wins somewhere. Nice? Certainly. Maybe this is not the main problem. We have a lot of other problems that need to be solved. But when they start saying that it’s worse here than there, it’s not true. We need to find a way to support young designers, because clothes are and will always be worn.

- Who can help support young designers?

We need to work through the state program, find ways of subsidies and incentives. We are now seriously addressing this problem. I think that around the middle of the year we will have the opportunity to do something. I won't talk about it for now.

- Fine. Aysel, please tell me, who are your clients? Who do you tell that this designer is good, that one is bad?

Our clients are very different, ranging from people from show business, actors, singers, government and public figures...

- Builders?

Builders, ordinary people, housewives, schoolgirls - completely different women, girls, ladies.

- How would you determine the price category of your stores?

We have big sales, and there are clients who dress according to the sales. There are clients who dress when a new collection arrives. Our average bill is about 15 thousand rubles.

- I remember there was such news: student Ksenia Sobchak was stolen from diamonds worth either 60 thousand dollars, or 600 thousand dollars. Students, of course, are different...

Well, schoolgirls are also different. Ksyusha Sobchak - by the way, is also our client.

- And you also give her advice about what suits her?

If he asks, we give it.

- Do they even ask?

They often ask. Although there are those who really don’t like advice.

- And Pugacheva asks what suits her?

I adore Pugachev, I really like her. Unfortunately, Alla Borisovna has not come to us yet, but Christina has visited us several times.

- And do you give Christina advice?

I can’t say that we give advice to Christina, there was simply no such need, but she comes to our stores from time to time.

- I talked with Alexandra Kaloshina, a representative of the Valentino brand and other Italian brands. She said that brands are absolutely unnecessary. By wearing them, we are promoting them, but we ourselves get lost. Therefore, clothes should be, as she believes, non-branded, fashion should be for oneself.

Read also:

How many people, so many opinions. Unbranded?... Fashion changes, times change, moods change - everything changes. Today maxi is fashionable, tomorrow - mini, today long dresses, wide trousers, high waists are fashionable, again the fashion of the 1970-1980s is returning. Check out the latest shows. The fashion world is changing all the time, setting different directions. It's your personal choice. You wear what you feel comfortable in. It all depends on the structure of your figure.

- Some people have clothes here, and the structure of the figure is in another place, but at the same time the person is comfortable, good and happy.

Yes, he's happy. But this is the most important thing. Of course, sometimes he looks a little strange from the outside. I take these things calmly.

- What place does fashion occupy in your life?

In my personal life - very big, because this is my job.

- And in the lives of your clients?

In my clients' lives, clothing is a way of self-expression. It’s not for nothing that, for example, people are greeted by their clothes and seen off by their intelligence. Of course, the way you dress, the way you present yourself, the way you express yourself - all this says a lot. And it depends on who you are and where you work. For example, there are rules of etiquette. First ladies cannot wear tight or very short clothes, they must wear stockings at all times. When you work in government, you can't wear miniskirts or low-cut necklines. There is a dress code, and I think it must be adhered to. If you are associated with the artistic world, with the world of culture or fashion, this gives you more opportunities to dress in a more varied way.

- Do you know the statement that it doesn’t matter what we wear, the main thing is that we have a good hairstyle and good shoes?

I agree. When your head is not right, your shoes are dirty and worn out, nothing can be worse. A woman should try to be well-groomed. To do this, it is absolutely not necessary to buy expensive things. To take care of yourself, you need to be in the mood. Many will now think: “Well, I have three children. I’m at work from morning to evening. I don’t have time for all this.” Well, don’t have time to wash your hair? I won't believe it.

We must create our own mood, this is very important. Believe me, it is absolutely not necessary to have a lot of money in order to dress beautifully. There are stores (unfortunately, we are not one of those stores) that today sell clothes that may not be of very good quality, but they correspond to fashion trends. Women just need to love themselves a little more and try, first of all for their own sake, to look better. When you put on a thousand or ten thousand dollar dress, that's not what's important, you know? It is important that we must love ourselves.

Even if we have two children, even if we don’t have husbands, we don’t have enough money - it doesn’t matter. Everything in life can change. And we can change everything with our attitude, with our own hands. I also work very hard. I achieved everything in this life myself. In any case, you cannot be discouraged, you must always move forward and love yourself. This is my motto in life.

- The most important thing is to love yourself. Our women can love everyone around them, except themselves. At the same time say: “Masha, what a beautiful dress you have.” What does our Masha answer? Masha says: “What are you talking about? This dress is a hundred years old.”

I always answer that way too, to be honest. It is believed that the most beautiful women live in Russia. There are beautiful and ugly everywhere. But for the most part, I agree, our women are the most beautiful. And more sincere, and, it seems to me, kinder. I traveled a lot, met different women. In America, women in general are very well-groomed - they go to hairdressers and get manicures. In France, ladies are not very well-groomed. In England they are generally not well-groomed.

- But still, ours are more natural, or something...

Ours are very beautiful, they only need a little bit. First of all, you need to set yourself up to the fact that everything should be fine, to set yourself up to be positive.

- Aysel, what do you see as your purpose, besides the fact that you have two children who need to be raised?

Two children whom I love very much... I don’t want to seem banal, but about three years ago I made a decision for myself, although I try not to talk about it openly, but my destiny is connected with my relationship with God. I feel the need to help people. Last year we organized a New Year's party in a Moscow orphanage for blind children. I just wanted to make a holiday for them, we invited artists, there were interesting performances. Even very seriously ill children - they also reacted. What do I want to tell you? It is very important to give warmth to someone, especially those who need it. Just stroke it one more time. I think this is very important. In general, I believe that people who can help someone with something, they should help. In general, we should help each other.

- If a patient cannot be cured, this does not mean that he cannot be helped.

Certainly. I say again, even very seriously ill children reacted: someone shouted something, someone stood up and started clapping their hands and stamping their feet. They express their emotions differently, they cannot come up and say: “Thank you very much.” Because sometimes they just can't talk. Someone was crying. Moreover, you can see from the children what families they come from. Some of their parents died, some were simply abandoned, and there are mentally ill children. They are isolated from society. They always enjoy attention, they are always waiting for someone.

- They all dream about their mother. The fact that adults are trying to somehow provide them financially is very important, but they need warmth...

My dream is for orphanages to cease to exist in Russia. There are nowhere else with such a number of orphanages as there are in Russia.

One of the most successful women in Russian retail, Aysel Trudel, has long been mastering the Internet as a trading platform and is confident in the brilliant prospects of online trading. Lenta.ru learned from the founder of the marketplace aizel.ru when fashion will be available to everyone, why we should pay attention to Russian designers and when offline shopping will become a thing of the past.

“The future of retail is online”

The history of our retail business goes back 15 years. In 2011, we decided to open an online store. Three years later, we created a marketplace based on it. This is a virtual space in which any Russian or foreign supplier that meets our quality standards can exhibit on our site for a certain percentage. This increases brand awareness and allows you to reach customers throughout Russia. And not only: from October 26 we are moving to the international market, the site has already been translated into English, because there are already many people who want to make purchases on our site.

The online store aizel.ru is today the only completely Russian project, without attracting foreign investment, operating on two models: its own products and marketplace. 65 Russian companies work with us. We are currently negotiating with manufacturers of Pavlovo Posad scarves and Khokhloma; they will appear with us at the beginning of 2017. We are interested in any promising Russian designer or Russian company offering products that, in our opinion, are suitable for the project, and we are ready to work with them. We offer comfortable conditions, the team is large and professional. We have stylists and specialists in logistics and technological solutions.

We deliver orders in Moscow on the same day or the next. St. Petersburg or Moscow region - the next day. To other cities up to five working days. We have a special call center for working with clients, including foreign ones. We work with Russian Post and DHL, and we now have five or six logistics solutions to speed up delivery times to customers.

Over the past year, we have sold almost nine thousand units of goods from Russian designers only, delivered to more than six thousand settlements of the Russian Federation and CIS countries. The geography is colossal, and this is the key to the interest of potential sellers. Because people working, for example, in Nizhny Novgorod or St. Petersburg, can often offer their products to three or four local stores. And we offer them access to the whole country, to the whole world. We have 450 thousand unique users monthly, and these numbers are only growing - by 180 percent per year.

The future of retail is the Internet - I am convinced of this. I myself came to the Internet from regular retail, and now we also have stores, but online trading provides a huge time saving. And we go to great lengths to make our clients feel comfortable. If you want to pay in cash - please, the courier will come with a cash register terminal; if you want to try it on - of course, you didn’t like the item and want to return it - we are legally obligated to accept the item back within seven working days. By the way, our return process is very simple. We do not charge for fitting, delivery or return. For us, the client is always right, we monitor the behavior of clients on the site, one might say, we hear how they breathe.

“We give great support to young designers”

We were one of the first to bring European designers to Russia - 15 years ago, when many were not represented here. Brands such as Gucci and Christian Louboutin have trusted us to represent their products on the Russian Internet. It's worth a lot. Of course, when you come to a store, have a cup of coffee or a glass of champagne, they try on shoes for you, they serve you, it’s a completely different experience. But today time has become even more valuable. I don’t discourage people from going to stores, but I am sure that the majority of customers today choose the Internet. This is especially true for young people. Why go to stores looking for something that can be delivered straight to your home in beautiful packaging?

It only takes a month from submitting an application to posting it on the site. It just seems like a difficult and complicated process. Actually this is not true. Our task for the coming years is to expand the range of the marketplace. Therefore, we are glad to see every conscientious Russian company with a sufficient number of goods. Of course, we can't take three or four things.

The process itself is very simple: an application is submitted to the site: we are such and such, here is our product - maybe with photographs. We look at it, check what kind of company it is. Next, our buyers contact this company and study the assortment. It is very important that there was depth; we need at least 30-40 positions. Ideally - 60. We process them and post them, with translation into English. The clothes are taken by professional stylists, we have a very strong team.

We give great support to young designers. Offline marketing, online marketing, PR through social networks and through all those channels that we have developed over the years. That is, we don’t just post their things on the website, we make them famous, we make sure that Russian buyers recognize and love them. And not only Russian ones: we believe that it is our duty to make our designers known abroad. They are no worse than foreign brands.

We have very talented guys, they just don’t know much about them. And the more we show our designers, the more demand there will be for them. So far, Russian brands make up 25 percent of the total volume and our task is to increase their number. Sorry I“m Not, Alexander Terekhov, KATYA DOBRYAKOVA are selling very well here. We also make a lot of capsule collections, especially for our website.

We have an interesting tool for promoting brands - an online magazine, which employs very strong stylists and art directors. On June 12, for Russian Independence Day, we filmed in the Kremlin. By the way, this was the first fashion shoot in this iconic place. We were allowed to shoot clothes by Russian designers there and it turned out very beautiful. Sometimes we do free shoots for glossy magazines, then we promote them through our channels.

We have also launched a children's direction, connecting such boutiques as Daniel and Kangaroo, and are in negotiations with Tender Age and Children's World. If there are any other Russian companies involved in this segment, we will welcome them all.

Fashion should be accessible to everyone; on our website there are things for three thousand and 60 thousand rubles. We want our store to be fashionable, but also affordable. But things must have quality, because we are responsible to our customers. Of course, we answer that all these are not fakes and were officially imported into Russia. If the production is local, then it is also important that things are sewn on time. If we believe in a certain designer, we can work with prepayment. They can sew in Russia no worse than abroad - in the European factories where I visited, I saw a lot of Russian seamstresses. And clothing production in the country will develop.

The granddaughter of the Prime Minister of Soviet Azerbaijan, the daughter of a diplomat, Aysel Huseynova did not plan to become the owner of the capital's boutiques. She had no intention of going into fashion at all. The girl, whose childhood was spent in the diplomatic missions of Algeria, Egypt and Libya, quite logically entered the Faculty of Journalism at MGIMO. Maybe devoting yourself to fashion and working with beautiful clothes was a secret dream? “No, it wasn’t,” Aysel states categorically. “I was only thinking about a career as a diplomat!” Now she practices diplomacy through fashion - establishing connections between countries, peoples and cultures. Her online store Aizel.ru sells the best brands: Gucci, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Balenciaga. How did she do it? “Youthful enthusiasm and precise calculation,” Aysel smiles.

Golden days

My parents and I traveled a lot, lived in different parts of the world, and I liked that there were always new people around. I listened with enthusiasm to the conversations of the elders: the interests of the country, then the Soviet Union, were always the most important for my parents. Once we came under American bombing in Libya, we were evacuated from there in 1986. After MGIMO, I was going to go to the Diplomatic Academy, but one fine day Inna Churikova - we were friends with her son Vanya - took us with her to the Nika Award ceremony and at the banquet introduced us to the owner of Russian Gold, Alexander Tarantsev: “Where Are you studying? MGIMO? Come, we need good personnel." They then had four stores: Donna Karan, Christian Lacroix, Thierry Mugler and Kookaï. I just finished my third year and went to practice with them to do public relations. It remained that way.

Make way for the young

In 2002, “Russian Gold”’s contract with the Donna Karan brand was expiring, and we decided to make a completely new store in its place. To this day, I believe that there were no analogues to Soho, a multi-brand boutique on Kutuzovsky, then. We brought American designers, many of whom we had never even heard of in Russia. Marc Jacobs, Peter Som, Derek Lamb, and the English - Stella McCartney, Julien MacDonald. At the same time, she opened the first Jimmy Сhoo boutique, worked there for five years and gained amazing experience. For this I am grateful to Alexander Petrovich Tarantsev: he gave me, a girl in my early twenties, the opportunity to implement such bold projects; he never interfered or hindered me, but, on the contrary, trusted me.

What's in my name for you?

I have never had any problems collaborating with fashion giants. Firstly, there was no language barrier. My sincere interest and energy were also active. After five years at Russian Gold, I realized that I could already do something myself, and together with Emin Agalarov we opened the first Chloé boutique in Crocus, then Pucci, Alessandro Dell'Acqua and Calvin Klein and mine there too. Aizel Secret's first multi-brand. I managed to do all this in literally two years, and in 2003 I already opened a boutique on Stoleshnikov Lane - one-story, but with a basement where past collections were sold. For a long time I couldn’t come up with a name for the store. Sarah from the French Colette tried to persuade me not to suffer and to name Aizel, but I was uncomfortable; my Soviet upbringing, in which modesty was considered the main adornment of a person, especially a girl, was making itself felt. But it happened anyway. When I wrote orders in showrooms (nowadays everything is written in special computer programs, but then everything was done manually), not yet knowing the name of my own store, I simply entered my name, Aizel, Aizel, Aizel was written everywhere. So it remained there.

Agent Recruitment

I can't imagine my life outside of Moscow. And in my travels, I always had a desire to bring all the best, something that was not here before, to Moscow. When I got to Agent Provocateur in London, I simply lost my head! And she started bombarding them with letters. They didn’t want to hear anything, they didn’t have a single franchise agreement in the whole world - what kind of Russia? I persuaded them for two years. They fought back, saying that they were not yet developing in the world and that they definitely did not need our country. And I explained that they underestimate us, that we have the most beautiful women and they will fall in love with this lingerie. We opened the first store in Stoleshnikovovo, over the next ten years we opened eight more boutiques in Moscow, one in St. Petersburg and one large online one, and next year we are going to the regions.

On Louboutins

I met Christian Louboutin by chance - I went to a party in New York and saw him going down the escalator, and waved my hands: we need to talk. He already had a store in Moscow at that time, but for his owner it was more of a hobby. I told Christian that I would try to make her an offer she couldn't refuse, and he agreed. That’s how it all turned out, I repurchased the contract. And I think that in the twelve years that we have been collaborating with Louboutin, his brand has advanced well, and not only in Russia.

The Russians are coming

I'm a patriot! I had a million opportunities to obtain another citizenship, but I never even thought about it. The main thing is that recently I began to proudly say abroad that I am from Russia. It's the same with Russian designers. I never could have imagined that I would wear it myself and sell Russian fashion. And today I am proud to be able to give them a unique chance to stand next to Gucci and Prada. And they sell well. Especially if the price-quality ratio is correct. Today there is no such division between Russian and Western. The world is big, there is one fashion in Asia, another in Europe, another in America, and in Russia everyone wears it, from Gucci to Rick Owens. And fashion, of course, is a strong tool of diplomacy.

Mind and Feelings

Our first multi-brand boutique in Stoleshnikov was charming, but it became crowded, many brands were now sold, and we needed space to display all the items on mannequins. Then I decided to build a new building where we had the opportunity to dress up all our hundred mannequins, style them in a new way, which we did every Sunday night. For twelve years! Today, clients are jaded, they travel a lot, they go everywhere. They need to be surprised with something all the time. Of course, I can’t always take everything I like, but I try. In online trading today, we rely more on numbers rather than on personal preferences. Even if we are talking about a new brand, we look at its cost, average bill, selling price, and compare it with similar brands in the same price category. That is, it is more mathematics. And offline we allow ourselves a more emotional approach. Now I went to the LVMH Prize: we took Ambush, then the Danish girl Cecilie Bahnsen, very talented, her dresses and blouses with embroidered collars are somewhat reminiscent of a school uniform and generally took me back to childhood. I don’t even understand yet who will buy these things, it’s not Gucci or Balenciaga, but she will definitely have clients. We also ordered items from the Japanese Kozaburo Akasaki and designer with Russian roots Maria Kazakova Jahnkoy, it is complex, but there is a core in it. Or, for example, Aquazzura shoes, this is my absolute choice, I am sure of its great future. The brand has an ideal ratio of price, quality and offer. These shoes are selling well, and I am now actively promoting them online. We now have a new pricing policy - European prices, because in online trading it is difficult to compete with Western sellers.