Mass affluent in Saint-Petersburg

A guide to the best 'bridge' brand stores in Saint Petersburg

Bridge is the gap between mass market and luxury labels. There's a lot of competition with a variety of styles, retail chain scales, and price points.

Virtually all well-established and mainstream brands that revisit cardigans, trench coats, and creased trousers, belong here: Massimo Dutti, Reiss, Gant, Max Mara Weekend, Stefanel, and Tommy Hilfiger. These brands are meant to please 'lazy shoppers' as their collections are almost free of blatantly tasteless pieces and made up of items that lend themselves easily to matching with each other.

To our tastes, Uterque stand out from the competition. Items by this label are both austere and 'architectural', a clever twist on the 1970s fashion. Of no less importance for the brand's DNA are accessories and jewellery.

Vassa&Co. is the first conceptual Russian brand with in-house production facilities and an extensive retail chain covering the whole of Russia. Multi-layered and asymmetric designs and experimental cutting techniques make some of their pieces look avant-garde. That said, their rails know no lack of solid-colour shirts, pencil skirts, and tight-fitting roll neck jumpers.

JNBY are a go-to for sculpturally inclined dresses, overcoats, down jackets, as well as basic trousers, jumpers, and T-shirts. Most of the items come in solid blacks, whites, grays, and beiges. Occasional prints are usually abstract, even though pop art and primitivism-inspired designs are also in place. As much interesting is the selection of footwear available at the store: during seasonal clearance sales boots by Jeffrey Campbell are sold there for ₽2,500.

The best menswear brands bordering between streetwear and casual fashion are carried by Mint. The Mint team import items by Maison Kitsune, Our Legacy, Han Kjobenhan Stone Island and make them available to Saint Petersburg fashionistas. Add to this that Mint is the only Saint Petersburg store that stocks limited edition styles by Yeezy and the like.

The DLT department store is home for a number of shop-in-shops by well-established French and American labels: Equipment, Alice + Olivia, Sandro, Au Jour Le Jour, Sisley, and Maje. American Vintage, a brand of basics that is still less than popular in Russia, merit our special admiration. A widespread notion of basics as coming in either black or white has been refuted by American Vintage whose pieces, as simple as they are, are very colourful. As if it were not enough, the brand makes painstaking effort to ensure that fabrics they use are soft and feel nice to the touch.