KEY POINTS:
The thing about oligarchs is that they're not really chatterboxes.
They might be under the right circumstances, but this particular circumstance, involving me and my notebook hanging around the gala opening evening of Moscow's Millionaire Fair, does not appear to be one of them.
This is possibly, in
part, because my attempt at the dress code is somewhat off the mark. I am wearing leather boots and a black coat, rather than a pair of gold hotpants, teamed with a cutaway bra-top, or a backless silver dress slashed to the thigh worn under a floor-sweeping fur coat.
Mostly, though, the problem is the notebook. Oligarchs don't do press. Not really, not outside the financial pages, and even then only occasionally.
But then, why would they? The last Russian billionaire to get himself noticed, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the Yukos oil company, was promptly arrested on the orders of Vladimir Putin and is now languishing in a Siberian jail.
There's no real incentive, then, to make polite chit-chat with random foreign journalists, although the director of the fair assures me that there's a full complement of oligarchs - Potanin, the billionaire head of Norilsk Nickel, for example, and Prokhorov, the man usually described as "Russia's most eligible bachelor".
Last year, former Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov toured the show with his entourage. Ksenia Sobchak, Russia's answer to Paris Hilton, is around somewhere, and everywhere you look there are 180cm, high-cheekboned, otherworldly models. What with the gold hotpants, the silver dresses, the chiselled features and unblinking eyes, they're more like model-cum-replicants, draped artfully over super cars or parading down catwalks on long, giraffish legs.
There are an awful lot of things for sale at the Millionaire Fair, most of which you could never have even imagined that anyone might want, let alone possibly need, or ever realistically consider buying.
A cigarette dispenser carved from the tusk of a 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth dug up from beneath the Siberian permafrost? A Swarovski crystal-encrusted Mercedes Benz? A diamond-studded computer zip card?
The occasion is the third annual Moscow Millionaire Fair, the biggest and most successful component of a worldwide franchise founded by a Dutch entrepreneur, Yves Gijrath.
When asked by a journalist what marked out Russian millionaires from their foreign counterparts, Gijrath's said: "They spend more."
They certainly do. These are the people who, it's hoped, will help pull us out of worldwide recession.
There are Gulfstream jets for sale at US$55 million ($68.5 million), Bugatti Veyrons at €1.3 million ($2.4 million), and a ruby- and diamond-studded mobile phone that I think is somewhat pricey at €120,000, until I spot another one for €350,000.
There's a stuffed sabre-toothed tiger for US$75,000, a Plexiglas self-playing piano for €120,000, a mattress that costs US$70,000 (how can a mattress cost US$70,000? If it is made from cashmere and silk, it turns out), and a sort of home cryotherapy unit in which you sit in temperatures of - 85C and enjoy its supposedly rejuvenating qualities. A snip at €160,000.
There is a stand devoted to the work of Ivan Slavinsky, the self-styled "most expensive artist in the world". It's an interesting claim, being (a) untrue, and (b) meaningless, particularly given that (c) the paintings are like a trip inside Jeremy Clarkson's subconscious - ladies in half-open overalls writhing in ecstasy over a Formula One car. One is even licking the wheels.
But it can't beat my favourite stand: a German company selling "cigar jewellery". For €89,000 you can buy a ring decorated with rubies and diamonds for your cigar to wear.
It's unclear who any of this stuff is aimed at and whether anybody's buying. It's the opening night, VIP invitation-only affair, but there's still a lot of people who are, like me, gawping and pointing in disbelief.
At a property stand I slump into a suede sofa next to a group of three 20-something women. I chat for a bit with one of them, Liana, and then I ask her: "Are there any oligarchs here?"
"There is one sitting right there," she says.
"Where?" I say. "There," she says. "He is the owner of this company. In fact, I have just bought an apartment, in his block."
And then a few minutes later, the man himself comes over and Liana whispers and giggles in his ear. When he leaves, she says: "I know him very well. I was just asking him about some things I left at his apartment after a party."
It's quite clear that Liana has been to his apartment more than once, although whether it's as a mistress (the oligarch, I read later, is in the throes of a messy divorce), a girlfriend or a potential Mrs Oligarch-to-be, it's difficult to tell.
She has her own firm, she tells me, which, very much a niche Moscow business this, specialises in decorating things - household objects, utensils, whatever - with Swarovski crystals.
"Do you think women want to make money themselves or marry money?" I ask her.
She doesn't hesitate for a moment.
"They want to marry money. In Russia, women still want to be looked after, they want the man to put on her coat, and to open doors and to bring presents. My jewellery, this is all presents ... Clothes, these boots, these are things that we buy for ourselves, but jewellery like this should be a present."
This may be the way it is but, for all the diamonds and baubles, it's not always a pretty sight watching Russia's rich at play.
At the end of the evening, I watch as a few men who cannot wait any longer push their way to the front of the cloakroom queue and demand their coats; a Hummer circumnavigates a traffic jam by simply wheeling up and across a central reservation; and in the lobby, three children run around a delicate crystal tree, tugging at its translucent branches.
Their mother sits and watches them until the inevitable happens, the branch snaps, and she simply turns away.
Part of the problem with finding oligarchs is that while everyone either knows them or knows of them, no one actually believes that they are an oligarch. In the '90s, it came to be the word for the handful of individuals who wrested control of the old state-run enterprises, making billions of dollars in the process and, for a time, wielding vast political power.
The Khodorkovsky affair signalled the end of that period, and now the label is applied to any super-rich businessman. Or woman, but mostly men. Of which Russia has thousands.
When Forbes magazine began compiling a Russian rich list in 2004, it said there were 36 billionaires. Last year there were 53, worth a total of US$282 billion. Now the 100 mark has been passed, according to Russian magazine Finans. The 100 richest citizens are reckoned to be worth almost 25 per cent of the nation's GDP, while 20 per cent of the country lives below the poverty line, according to conservative estimates.
In a recent survey, 75 per cent of respondents said they wanted to be properly hugely wealthy, not merely middle-class. The oligarchs are not just a massive pillar of the entire economy, or a small elite of reclusive, secretive individuals, they are a cultural touchstone for the entire nation.
On day two, the fair is open to the public, and more than 40,000 people, paying €30 a head, will eventually pass through the doors. In terms of oligarch-hunting, however, the prospects look poor, until I meet Anton, the marketing manager for a property firm, Villagio, that specialises in building "cottage settlements" - dachas in well-guarded compounds on the outskirts of the city.
Anton agrees to take me on a tour of its latest development and arrange a meeting with one of the company's joint owners, Sergey Kozlovskiy.
When I Google him, I discover he is a bona fide Russian rich man - a mid-lister, in Forbes' terms - not so rich as to be a household name, but rich enough to be very rich indeed.
We drive out of Moscow to a surprisingly beautiful spot. The development is in the middle of a forest, and with a sprinkling of fresh snow it looks rather magical.
Anton and his colleague Paul, the sales director, bombard me with figures: the company employs 10,000 people, including 300 architects, it's worth US$4 billion, there are 5km of canals, a large artificial lake, a school, a healthcare centre, shops.
The houses aren't so much cottages as the type of property Tony Soprano lives in - all double garages and pastel colours, and picture windows and balustrades and cornices.
Before we meet Kozlovskiy, Paul and Anton tell me that he is a very modest sort of oligarch. That he doesn't fly a private jet as he says it's an "unnecessary luxury". How he's still married to his childhood sweetheart, and how he refused to buy his son a car "until he was 18 and then bought him a not very good one and the next one he had to earn".
The only sign of oligarchiness is that he is building a house which, at 10,000sq m, will be one of the biggest private houses in Russia.
Paul stops his car to say hello to some customers. "Where?" I say. There's only a man in a flat cap and work boots. Is he an oligarch? It turns out that he is. "He is an important client. Very very rich. Gas industry. No pictures."
His wife is waiting in a fairly unassuming Mercedes, wearing a plastic mac. They're about as unlikely a vision of oligarch and oligarch's wife as you could ever meet.
I'm beginning to realise that my preconceived ideas about Russians aren't right. There's a distinct lack of flashiness among the real elite.
It's those on the way up who have to look the part.
Kozlovskiy, when I finally meet him, tells me: "Ten years ago there was much more of this tacky, luxurious taste. Now in high society it's bad manners to demonstrate your wealthiness. As well as connections with the political situation, there's been a change of culture."
By which he means Putin.
What Kozlovskiy's customers want more than anything, he says, is not security, or space. It's "very important to feel comfortable in the same circle of people which surrounds you". He was a young computer programmer in 1991, discovered there was no company which could help you buy a flat, and set up his own, Inkom, which is now the biggest estate agent in Russia, one of the top 100 private companies.
Not bad for a boy who grew up in a communal flat. His family had two rooms and shared the kitchen and bathroom with three other families.
That's the thing about Russia. It's just so extreme, where people have come from compared to what they have now, what has changed in the space of 15 years.
"The level of income you can achieve here is highly unlikely to be achieved in any other country in the world," he says.
Kozlovskiy's unusual though, explains George Shishkovsky, the chatty owner of LondonDom.com, the top Russian relocation agents in London, because he doesn't have what they call "an airport in case of emergency" - a house abroad.
"Everybody has an 'airport' to land at in case there is turbulence in Russia." It's not hard to see why. I meet Maxim Kashulinsky, the editor of Forbes Russia, whose predecessor Paul Klebnikov was shot dead in a drive-by contract killing shortly after he published Russia's first rich list in 2004. The police believed it was the work of Chechens, but nobody has ever been convicted of his murder.
Even Daria Veledeeva, the editor of woman's magazine Grazia and very much a girl around town, tells me she has to be a little bit careful who she chooses to put on her "fashion jury" pages.
"It's not that I've ever been scared of anybody, but you pick the wrong person and ... It's why we don't have a proper paparazzi here."
Just as the Millionaire Fair is winding down, a conference on international luxury is gearing up. It's a high-profile affair. Tom Ford is in town, as is Donatella Versace, and Suzy Menkes, the fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune.
I go to a press conference and there's an unmistakable whiff of western companies trying desperately to cash in. Later, I go to a party in the Versace shop, hosted by Donatella herself. Russia's fashion elite come to pay homage. These are daughters of oligarchs, girlfriends of oligarchs, wives of oligarchs, and the closest thing that Russia has to aristocracy these days - the granddaughters of Mikhail Gorbachev.
He turns up in ads for Louis Vuitton, which says everything about Russia and its relationship with the luxury goods business.
It's the ride of a lifetime, the Russian gravy train. Although the fair organisers say seven Bugattis at €1.3m a piece were sold, 15 GoldVish phones at €350,000, and a gold-plated coffee-maker at €65,000, I feel quietly pleased that the German cigar jewellery people are wearing expressions of disappointment.
But then I guess you don't become a Russian oligarch by being stupid enough to buy a jewelled cigar gee-gaw.
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