The Russians seem to have a passion for shoes. Definately, shoes take up quite a lot of the Russian psyche. Every other shop is a shoe shop, selling the brightest, most teeteringly high heeled and pointy toed stillettos you can imagine. Or vertiginous wedgies, or outrageously spangly sandals soaring across the window, or eye-watering designer trainers, or lofty boots with lacing and fake fur in improbable designs, or different scandalous sandals with things that tie up your leg and more diamante, chains, and metallic leather in strange colours than you can really, by rights, fit on a strappy sandal and still walk. Even the men's shoes are pointy and come in heels and colours that no respectable Englishman would conceive possible.
I know why UK fashions are called, at best, stylishly restrained, or possibly really dull, depending on your point of view. Although lots of people here wear jeans (when I came 20 years ago, we stood out a mile for wearing jeans, now I stand out because I'm not), lots of women, of all ages and especially in the 'burbs, wear skirts, tops and dresses so bright, frilly, lacy, flouncy, sheer, patterned, laced, leather, floaty, leopard skin, crocheted, whatever, often all at once, that I feel like I am walking though a completely outré wedding. Well, often I am walking though a wedding. The tradition here is that the wedding party goes to local landmarks and has photos taken. I saw a bridesmaid in a tigher-than-skin fishtail dress with train, bright purple, only some very thin lacing up the 'back' (read: anything that's not actually front) between her and gravity, wandering though Red Square with her party, stillettos slipping on the cobbles. Now that's a change from the Gorbachov era.