Russian influencers have taken to social media to call out the alleged rise of ‘Russophobia’ within luxury fashion, positioning economic sanctions carried out by Europe as evidence of their own victimisation in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

This week, Anna Kalashnikova, a singer and actor with 2.4 million followers on Instagram, posted about her own experience with discrimination. When she walked into a Chanel store in Dubai, she discovered that the brand no longer sold its bags to Russians.

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DJ Katya Guseva, TV presenter Marina Ermoshkina and model Victoria Bonya also followed suit, with a symbolic gesture to the French fashion house by cutting up their handbags with kitchen scissors and garden shears.

Russian influencers are cutting up their Chanel bags in protest, after Chanel suspended operations in Russia, in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Marina Ermoshkina, a Russian TV presenter, reacted in shock when she learnt that employees at a Chanel store in Dubai had refused to sell a high-end bag to a Russian customer. They later allowed her to buy the bag after asking her to sign papers attesting that she would not wear the bag in Russia.

Ermoshkina, 28, bought a pair of gardening scissors, took a video of herself as she cut her Chanel bag in half and posted it to Instagram.

“This is Russophobia,” she said in a phone call from Moscow. “This is the purest form of discrimination.”

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