Fashion & Beauty

Plastinina ready to reinvent herself

In May 2008, 15-year-old Russian heiress Kira Plastinina landed stateside, looking to make a huge splash in the fashion world.

In the months to follow, the Paris Hilton-obsessed daughter of multimillionaire Sergei Plastinin — who made his fortune selling orange juice in post-Soviet Russia — would ambitiously open a dozen eponymous fast-fashion stores done up in Barbie Dreamhouse-style decor, including three in NYC.

Her juice-mogul dad reportedly dropped $80 million on the project — paying Paris Hilton $2 million to attend his daughter’s Moscow fashion show and hiring Chris Brown to perform at her shop’s LA opening. (Plastinin’s said to be worth well over $600 million.)

Ridicule was swift and severe — fashion blogs cheekily referred to her as a “designer” in quotes, and New York magazine blasted the store and its “pants with the zipper vent in the ass region that never should have seen the daylight, much less in a teeny-bopper store.”

At 16, Kira Plastinina took her dad, Sergei Plastinin, to Vogue Russia’s 10th anniversary bash in Moscow.WireImage

Then the bottom fell out of the economy, closing banks and shaking even some of the most established brands. Within a year, the company closed all of its US stores and filed for bankruptcy. (The brand still thrives with shops in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.)

Today, a much older and wiser Plastinina, now 21, is back with the American launch of her much pricier designer line, Lublu — including a Dallas flagship, a Hollywood showroom for celebrity outreach and an e-commerce platform launching today.

“I don’t think my name will hurt or help me. It’s part of my story. It’s hard for me to compare myself now to my brand from a few years ago,” says Plastinina, a senior at Dallas’ Southern Methodist University.

“As a designer I have matured so much and learned so much. I can say we’re more focused now.”

Lublu, which means “I love” in Russian, has had early and promising momentum here.

She cast her fall campaign with Man Repeller blogger Leandra Medine, Russian street-style star Miroslava Duma and Dannijo’s Danielle and Jodi Snyder. Harper’s Bazaar featured her as a designer to watch in its September issue, and the hottest uptown boutique, Five Story, is carrying the line, placing it between Balmain and Jason Wu.

“I think it’s a beautiful line, and it’s come a long way,” says Moda Operandi co-founder and former CEO Aslaug Magnusdottir, who has known Plastinina since she launched her original concept.

And, says Magnusdottir, she has made the necessary adjustments to become a fashion player.

Plastinina’s spring 2014 Lublu line offers floral prints in classic silhouettes.

“She is starting with one store and taking it a little more slowly this time around and testing what the consumer is reacting to because it’s likely going to be different than it is in Russia.”

Even so, Plastinina still has a taste for excess.

In August, she flew a group of fashion tastemakers — including Magnusdottir, socialite Hannah Bronfman and Five Story boutique owner Claire Distenfeld — on a private jet to Dallas for the opening of her first American boutique, where they mingled with her sorority sisters from Kappa Alpha Theta.

“I did meet a few of her sorority sisters at the party. And later that evening, her boyfriend took my husband to his fraternity. We got the full-on experience,” laughs Magnusdottir.

Though Plastinina seemingly disappeared after her retail belly flop, she continued to work on her brand — including the more romantic Lublu line — in Russia while attending an English-speaking high school in Moscow. But when it came time for college, she opted not to attend a design school or a Big Apple institution.

“I had already studied fashion courses in Milan. And by the time I was applying to college, I already had four years of work experience,” says the communications major. “And I just realized that I will never learn as much about fashion as I did just working all of the time. I felt a general education would be more important to me.”

She joined Kappa Alpha Theta, snagged the requisite fraternity boyfriend, and brings Lublu togs back for her Theta sisters to wear to formals.

But she insists her life is that of a normal college student, albeit with a sizable workload on top of her studies.

The co-ed says she travels back to Moscow — where Lublu is based — at least once a month and Skypes daily with her fashion team. Her father, she says, is an adviser.

Plastinina wants to eventually get an MBA and grow Lublu into a global lifestyle brand like Stella McCartney. She even plans to bring her fast-fashion line back to the United States in the future.

But for now, she’s concentrating on being strategic with Lublu and graduating college — and proving that she’s not just a modern-day Veruca Salt.

“I guess when I was little, I paid attention to [criticism], and of course people will say a lot of things,” says Plastinina.

“Unfortunately, the people who say things like that or who will post negative comments on the Internet are people who don’t know what I do and haven’t seen the latest collection. They just comment on stereotypes they have formed of me, and I can’t do anything about that.”