Kazakhstan set for visions of haute couture

ALMATY, Nov 19 (AFP) - A flurry of French couturiers and a beauty queen are heading for Kazakhstan to tickle the fancy of elite consumers benefitting from the Caspian region's vast mineral wealth.

The sparsely-populated republic will host leading French fashion houses Carven, Francesco Smalto and Dominique Sirop for French Haute Couture Fashion Week, starting on Thursday under the patronage of France's Miss Europe 2002 Elodie Gossuin.

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Around 150 haute couture creations will be displayed during this "adventure" in the "new El Dorado," as the event's organiser Karine Lions calls Kazakhstan, whose vast oil reserves represent the world's biggest oil find of recent decades.

The event is backed by Kazakh oil, media and consumer giant BSB whose flagship "Maison Francaise" clothing store cannot be missed in the otherwise unglamorous setting of Almaty's commercial centre thanks to a 20-metre (60-foot)-high imitation of Paris's Eiffel Tower on the pavement outside.

As advertising went up outside the Almaty residence of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the signs were that this would be little more than an other-worldly diversion for many Kazakhs, whose budgets are usually more suited to bargains smuggled across the border from China.

Despite a small minority of wealthy individuals, salaries in this former Soviet republic made up mostly of steppe and desert average 160 dollars (140 euros) a month, and nearly a third of its 15 million inhabitants live in poverty.

However the Express-K newspaper was optimistic that there would be some "real heroes" in the form of five local fashion houses.

These fledgling firms hope that their turn on the catwalk will impress wealthier residents more accustomed to shopping in Istanbul or Paris than back home in Kazakhstan.

Kazakh producers fearful of being upstaged because of associations with their Soviet forebears usually attach fake Western brand labels to their work, said Kuralai Nurkadilova, one of a few designers determined to turn the tide.

"Kazakhstan is considered quite promising by Western fashion houses, but this is also about (Kazakh) designers reaching new customers," Nurkadilova told AFP.

But others see a steep climb ahead before Kazakhstan's once flourishing clothing industry recovers from being severed from its Soviet-era consumers.

It also faces stiff competition from neighbouring Uzbekistan, a bitter rival of Kazakhstan and the world's second largest cotton exporter after the United States.

"It's more profitable to import clothes than produce them here from imported fabric," complained Sabyrkul Asanova, president of the former nerve-centre of Kazakh clothing production, Almaty's Symbat fashion academy.

"The handful of designers participating in fashion week are hardly significant."

And amid claims that much revenue from Kazakhstan's vast oil and metal reserves has gone to a small circle of Nazarbayev associates there is little sign of a downturn at the Almaty stalls where customers take flasks to be filled with "French-style" perfume at a fraction of the price of Western imports.

"Actually it's made in Bulgaria," a perfume seller told AFP. "But the smell's just the same."

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