optimistic

The Russian clothes designer Igor Chapurin knows what it’s like to live through a crisis. He opened his first Moscow boutique in 1998, in the wake of the country’s financial collapse, when Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt and sent the rouble into a tailspin, wiping out the savings of millions. “In 1998 [it felt as if] the world opened up and everything fell in,” says Chapurin. “Today it’s not like that – things are slowing down but no one yet knows what is really happening.”