..."A lot of rich people here don't say how they earn their money," said
Karsten Jacob, a salesman for Bugatti sports cars at the fair. "They wear
sports shoes and training suits, and they walk up to our 1.3 million euro
car and say, 'Where can I buy it?' "

Mr. Jacob was standing beside a $1.65 million Bugatti Veyron sports car that
was hand-made in France. Its top speed is 253 miles per hour. Over the
weekend, the display model was sold to an anonymous Russian buyer, who paid
full price....

November 1, 2006
New Czars of Conspicuous Consumption
By ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW, Oct. 31 - Who would boast that their wares are the world's most
expensive? Those selling to a select class of Russians.

Rich ones.

Vendors swished into Moscow this past weekend, setting up elaborate booths
offering a range of high-priced products, from jets and yachts to private
islands and more familiar luxury goods.

They were angling for a glance or hint of interest from Russia's oil barons,
captains of industry and others whose origins of wealth are unclear.

Among them was Michael Morren, a dapper Swiss executive in a pin-striped
suit, who was selling high-end cellphones for the GoldVish brand of Geneva.
GoldVish handsets typically go for $18,000 to $150,000, somewhat higher than
models from Nokia or Motorola.

For the crowd at Moscow's second annual Millionaire Fair, however, even
GoldVish's usual prices didn't seem entirely appropriate.

The price for Mr. Morren's diamond-studded cellphone? A mere $1.27 million.

Five years into an oil boom, Moscow is becoming one of the hottest markets
for luxury goods. Already, it counts 25 billionaires, along with a healthy
number of Russia's total of 88,000 millionaires.

The GoldVish cellphone, for example, glitters with 120 carats of diamonds,
encrusting a case of white gold.

And if the sparkle alone did not draw in customers, Mr. Morren hired a
blonde model to hold up a plaque declaring: "Certificate of the most
expensive mobile phone."

Nobody was challenging that claim.

"Somebody is wearing a nice watch and nice jewelry," explained Mr. Morren,
the president of GoldVish. "And then the phone rings. It doesn't match. It's
a piece of plastic. We make it match."

Though a good deal of the oil money is trickling down to ordinary people,
the elite class of Russian rich are definitely growing richer, according to
Peter Westin, the chief economist at MDM Bank, a Russian bank in Moscow.

He says that the gap between rich and poor is widening in Russia, though it
is still not as extreme as in the United States, according to a statistical
measure by the World Bank.

Perhaps that's because poverty is shrinking here and there are still fewer
rich people than in America. But they are trying to make up for lost time.

"Russians always loved luxury but lived in poverty," said Olga V.
Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist studying the Russian elite.

"This attraction to luxury became known as the 'palace style.' In a tiny
Moscow apartment we would hang a giant crystal chandelier, like in a
palace."

And with each passing year of soaring commodity prices, very rich Russians
are taking on more of the swagger and style of Arabian oil sheiks, as well
as their spendthrift habits.

Andrei Melnichenko, then a 33-year-old banker, married a Serbian model near
Cannes in a ceremony that cost $40 million in September last year.

It was the social event of the year for Russian oligarchs; for the nuptials,
the couple dismantled an Orthodox church in Russia and re-assembled it in
France.

There are rich people. And then there are the Russian rich.

"A lot of rich people here don't say how they earn their money," said
Karsten Jacob, a salesman for Bugatti sports cars at the fair. "They wear
sports shoes and training suits, and they walk up to our 1.3 million euro
car and say, 'Where can I buy it?' "

Mr. Jacob was standing beside a $1.65 million Bugatti Veyron sports car that
was hand-made in France. Its top speed is 253 miles per hour. Over the
weekend, the display model was sold to an anonymous Russian buyer, who paid
full price.

Such conspicuous consumption is reflected in a Russian joke making the
rounds. It describes how one wealthy businessman tells a friend of buying a
tie for $100. "You fool," the other responds. "You can get the same tie for
$200 just across the street."

Vyachislav Y. Nikishin, a client at the fair, said Russia's recent history
suggested wild spending was not so foolish, after all.

"Spend while you can" is a motto that has come to shape behavior, given the
sometimes short-lived prominence of entrepreneurs, business tycoons and
other moneyed players in Russia's pell-mell business environment.

Saving money in a bank might also be seen as foolhardy, for banking crises
have occurred frequently. "It doesn't do any good to put it in a bank," Mr.
Nikishin said. "We have the bitter experience."

The Millionaire Fair, a traveling exhibit begun in the Netherlands in 2002,
has had its greatest success in Moscow. At the fair's other venues, in
Amsterdam, Cannes, Shanghai and Kortrijk, Belgium, people came more to gawk.
Russians came here to buy.

Last year in Moscow, vendors did $600 million worth of business, selling
gilded computer mice, curvy sports cars, Caribbean yacht charters and villas
off the coast of Dubai, said Natalya A. Zadvornaya, the spokeswoman for the
fair.

By comparison, the show in Amsterdam this year rang up sales of $300
million.

The Moscow fair is gaining attention. In 2005, 25,000 people showed up. This
year, Ms. Zadvornaya said, 40,000 stopped by the cavernous exhibition space.

Not surprisingly, there was more than a touch of gaudiness.

At one booth, a company hawked villas on an island off Panama. The island
was once owned by John Wayne, and to give sales a boost, the display
included a model wearing only body paint, in the image of a cowboy outfitted
with bandana, vest, cartridge belt and revolvers.

Elsewhere, a jeweler sold a gold-plated pacifier.

GoldVish, the bejeweled phone maker, sold 15 handsets, though not the $1.27
million phone.

Diamonds and gold aside, the phone is quite functional: it comes with
Bluetooth, a camera, MP3 player and text messaging. The charger is included,
too - gold-plated, of course.