#11 - JRL 8026
From: Gideon Lichfield <gideonlichfield@economist.com>
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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 21:41:33 -0000
Subject: Gideon-Moscow 41 - Me and my chinelle
"Is that Chanel?" a Russian friend asked when he first saw me wearing it. "No," I said, a bit puzzled. "I got it in a market in London for forty pounds."
After a second and a third person had displayed an unexpectedly close acquaintance with French fashion labels I inquired further. Not Chanel, but "chinelle". Elsewhere, as far as I can make out, a chinelle is a suit of baby clothes, a kind of thread, or the name of a fairly successful female fashion model. In Russia it is a military greatcoat.
I got it for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's practical. For a nation that spends more time in the cold than almost any other, Russians and especially Muscovites have an astonishing propensity to let fashion interfere with function. Men must not wear big boots in winter; indeed, if possible they should wear thin-soled patent- leather shoes, especially when the streets are full of mucky slush. And men's coats must end above the knee, leaving half your leg to succumb to frostbite. Full-length coats are rare enough that I've never found one in a shop here. (Perhaps Chanel does have a chinelle, but I need to earn for a few more years first.) Fur coats are considered to be the preserve of gangsters, celebrities and mincing homosexuals. I prefer not to advertise my membership of any of those groups. The chinelle is the ideal above-minus-5 coat (most people's outerwear divides along this watershed), and can even go colder with a couple of extra layers.
The other reason is that I think it has a certain romantic style. The coat is tight-waisted and silver-buttoned; it fastens right up to the top, and swishes around at the bottom. I feel like I'm reminding Muscovites of their days of nineteenth-century glory. Also, when I grow my hair and leave my sideburns long, Russians remark that I look like Pushkin. Maybe if I swish up and down Tverskaya in my chinelle for long enough, stroking my sideburns and declaiming Evgeny Onegin, I can make some spare cash allowing tourists to take my photograph. (Note to self: read Evgeny Onegin.)
Certainly, though, wherever I go, the chinelle always gets a reaction. It has gotten me into trouble, such as the time two policemen stopped me and asked for my passport, which I wasn't carrying. Legally they have no right to ask for your papers without grounds for suspicion. After a while arguing this point with them I insisted on calling my Russian lawyer. She told me to pass one of them the phone. They talked for a very long time. He handed it back with a smug expression. She told me that as foreigner I could be caused all sorts of problems; her legal advice was to bribe them a thousand rubles, a bit more than $30. Having been paid, the policemen turned a lot more friendly. "Allow us to give you a piece of advice, young man," said one. "Don't wear the chinelle. That's why we stopped you. It makes you look like an army deserter."
Getting fashion advice from two overweight men in lumpy grey janitors' outfits with silly fake-fur hats and tinny insignia was more than I could take. I carried on wearing the chinelle. And I told my Russian friends the story. They were shocked, of course. "A thousand rubles?! You need to get a new lawyer. Should have been a hundred, max."
My friends' reaction to the chinelle varies. To them it's either slightly strange or simply adorable. "I just love your Frrrrench," said one of them, using what is apparently the fashion-world word for it. Russians on the street look at me like I'm a bum (distaste), a student (sympathy) or a foreigner (smirks). Today the young security guard manning the entrance to an official reception let his gaze travel up and down me with thinly disguised contempt. "Do you always wear that chinelle?" "Yes," I said, "shouldn't I?" He got a little defensive. "Just asking..."
I had two theories about why it got such looks. One: the Russians can tell that it is, in fact, a German chinelle (although it has no lapels and no markings, not even on the buttons) and think it an insult: this year is the 60th anniversary of the battle of Stalingrad, and memories are still strong. My preferred explanation was that they thought it insane to wear anything connected with the military, given that military service for most people is literally torture. (A taxi driver spent a long while reminiscing about the crazy rules when he served in the army, under which every soldier, no matter where stationed, was obliged to start wearing his chinelle on the day that the defence ministry decreed the onset of winter, and take it off upon the official announcement of spring.)
But today a foreign colleague gave me another reason. Perhaps Russians think that for a non-soldier, and worse still a foreigner, to wear an item of military uniform is disrespectful to the glorious Russian armed forces. As I stood on the platform on the metro heading home, I thought about that and resolved that I would hang up my chinelle and go back to my short but warm and utterly commonplace black sheepskin jacket, at least until I move to a country with fewer complexes.
And then a young man, probably still a teenager, stomped by, looked the chinelle up and down, and nodded at it with an approving grin. Maybe I'm going to spark a new fashion. Watch out, Moscow.