When you first enter Mesto (Place) located in the oldest part of Moscow, you’re greeted by Mesto’s charming host, Nastya Kolesnikova, who while treating you with tea and home-made charlotte, instantly puts you under her spell.
Mesto is a shop, café and creative lab where something unusual is always happening. It opened in the beginning of 2009 and has already managed to create a lot of buzz for its never ending list of special projects.
As a shop they have a selection of capsule collections from unknown designers from different towns around Russia. It’s mostly experimental, one-of-a-kind garments, not always wearable, but definitely worth checking out.
If you happen to walk by Mesto in the evening or during the weekend, the chances are high that you’ll catch an entartaining lecture about anything in the world from the history of the contemporary art-scene to debates about the future of Russian fashion or a lecture from Mark Eley (from Eley Kishimoto). The other day there was a DIY master-class with a DJ-set from a scandianvian artist and a pasta-cooking session involving Russian socialites. The list is endless.
Nastya and her friends are working 24/7 to make Mesto a place where you’ll feel like home (that is if you were raised in a family of bohemian intellectuals with a penchant for sponge cake and existential debate)
Their blog is a must-read for those that can decipher Russian
Anna Frost is Pedestrian’s Russian Standard Editor at Large and is stationed in Moscow. She also writes about all things fashion at her aptly titled blog Anna Frost Daily Fashion.
