The rise of Miroslava Duma

Be it in New York or London, Milan or Paris, a permanent fixture on the front row of every A-List show this season has been a pint-sized, impeccably dressed Russian.

But don't be deceived by her diminutive stature. Miroslava Duma - a former editor at Harper's Bazaar Russia turned consulting and digital media powerhouse - is becoming a force in the fashion industry.

Ms Duma is part of a glossy coterie of 21st-century tsarinas currently taking the scene by storm, including couturier Ulyana Sergeenko and Elena Perminova, model and wife of billionaire mogul Alexander Lebedev. The daughter of a Russian senator and wife of entrepreneur Aleksey Mikheev, with whom she has one child and is expecting another, Ms Duma initially made a name for herself by courting street-style photographers with her wardrobe of the world's most exclusive pieces, the minute they came off the catwalk.

Salvatore Ferragamo and Roger Vivier quickly booked Ms Duma - or "Mira", as she is widely known - to front several global advertising campaigns, as did Moscow's high temple of fashion, the department store Tsum. Russia's ministry of industry and trade recently hired her as a consultant, as have big-name houses such as Hermes.

So what is driving the 29-year-old's heady ascent through the global fashion industry ranks? Many point to the growing clout she appears to hold in dictating the tastes of style-savvy spenders in the former USSR as western labels seek to grow in the region. "We absolutely noticed a significant uptick in spending from our Russian clients after we featured Miroslava in our Oscar de la Renta campaign earlier this year," confirms Stephanie Phair, managing director of the Outnet.

"That part of the world appears to adore and look up to her and what she does both on and offline - she has a career and family life that appeals to many of our customers' ambitions."

Continuing geopolitical unrest and the weight of western sanctions on Russian luxury spending - which makes up around 4 per cent of the global market - may be taking its toll. But Ms Duma, who has an 885,000-strong army of Instagram followers, has now set her sights on a larger slice of the lucrative emerging markets pie.

"Since launching my own fashion, arts and lifestyle magazine Buro 24/7 in 2011, I can see an appetite for our style of content that reaches far beyond just Russia," she tells me on the phone from Paris, where she is en route to the Dior show.

After securing sponsorship from the likes of Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren and Chanel, licensing agreements are now taking the Buro concept to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, central and eastern Europe and across the Middle East. Not that everyone is necessarily a fan of Ms Duma, the tsarinas and their gilded Russian aesthetic.

"They are just really rich girls, and that's it," said Vasily Esmanov, founder of Look At Me, the digital magazine beloved by the bright young things of Moscow and St Petersburg, last year.

Opinions may be divided, but Ms Duma's profile is flourishing, alongside other fresh-faced figureheads.

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"There's a new wave of characters appearing at fashion weeks that doesn't fit the classical old guard mould of editors, buyers or even bloggers," says the Outnet's Stephanie Phair.

"Most are there because they are social media savants and extremely stylish to boot. And if these are the faces that are continually resonating with the consumers, then in the eyes of the industry the stars of women like Mira are only going to rise."

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