How can you make a fashionable coat when the only fabric available is a piece of coarse felt used to make military overcoats? A possible solution — accompanied by spirited sewing patterns — can be found in the old, yellowing pages of a...

... revenues of less than 2 million rubles ($65,000). The proposed rules would take effect in 2013, though stores would be given a transition period to comply. Bank or credit cards currently account for about 30 percent of transactions, and use is increasing, Fashion Continent financial director Sergei Kutsenko told Vedomosti. Banks charge vendors 1.5 percent or more of the purchase price for each card transaction, so working with cash is more profitable for most businesses, said Lavrenty Gubin, a spokesman...

... Vedomosti that the sportswear maker had chosen re:Store Retail Group as a franchisee.   Nike has good potential for growth in Russia because it's a well-recognized brand with a long presence in the market, said Anush Gasparyan, commercial director of Fashion Consulting Group. The company is outdoing its biggest rival Adidas globally but lags behind in Russia, having only 100 stores compared with almost 800 Adidas outlets, she said in e-mailed comments. However, Nike has a chance to catch up, as...

... telephone. Thick fog and the jagged mountain's slopes are still keeping helicopters from landing, so the bodies remain at the crash site, Daryatmo said. He added that the soldiers, police and volunteers on the rescue team were cutting down trees to fashion a landing area for helicopters. The jetliner slammed into the dormant volcano at nearly 800 kilometers per hour during drizzle. Russian and French investigators have joined the investigation into the cause. The Superjet 100 is Russia's first...

... van after her first-ever detention. "I just want to shout: I don't believe it!" a commentator called Marietta wrote, while another called Alina attacked her "lying." Spletnik sneered that Sobchak is simply on trend. "It's not fashionable any more to show off diamonds, dance on tables or smear black caviar on the walls of Courchevel hotels," it wrote. "Now everyone is reading poetry and trying to say clever things about eternal values." Sobchak has even let her...

... remind us easily of modern-day television broadcasts or Internet podcasts. A clothes rack holding the characters' costumes always stands nearby at stage right, reminding us of two things, perhaps — first that even in death and political struggle fashion is of no small concern, and, second, that all of these people involved in this battle of wits are, to one extent or another, playing roles they agreed to play. Berkovich's production of "The Lark" avoids bold statements and makes no...

... respectable results in two of the work's three segments. It came as no surprise to find the Bolshoi dancers comfortably at home in "Diamonds," the "Russian" finale to "Jewels," set to the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and fashioned by Balanchine with more than a nod toward the choreography of the Mariinsky Theater's great Marius Petipa, on which he was nurtured during his youthful years in St. Petersburg. What did surprise in "Diamonds," or nearly so, was the...

... Medinsky's appointment is a clear illustration of how loyalty to the Kremlin and its ruling party has become the most important job qualification when top government positions are handed out — just like during the Soviet period. In a similar fashion, Igor Kholmanskikh, a worker in Russia's largest tank factory, was nominated as presidential envoy to the Urals Federal District last week. Kholmanskikh's foray into politics was a phone call he made to Putin's call-in show in December in which...

... recruiting program "Bring a Friend to Be a Pilot." For every new pilot hired on the recommendation of an Aeroflot employee, that employee receives a 200,000 ruble ($6,800) bonus. Over the course of 2011, the airline hired 35 pilots in this fashion, flight director Igor Chalik told Vedomosti in April. Panteleyev said he doesn't know of any similar programs at other Russian airlines. Aeroflot started the program after first appealing to recruiting agencies to help it hire pilots, Chalik said...