Fashion: LOOK EAST

The hottest girls in fashion come from eastern Europe and some of the hottest cosmetics are the ones Mrs Brezhnev might have worn in her more playful moments

Where do model agents and fashion photographers go for their holidays? While the rest of us might dream of sun-soaked beaches or of villas in Tuscany, the model agent dreams of using two weeks away from her desk in search of the Next Great Face. The keen photographer dreams of stumbling over a gorgeous girl crying out to be captured on camera.

Where to go to find the next face of the decade/the year/the week/the moment? Head East and come back with the "It Girl". In the past few years, several of the stars in fashion's firmament have been discovered in what used to be called the USSR and in what used to be called Yugoslavia. And there are plenty more where they came from. And, as summer turns to autumn, some of these wannabee It girls will turn up here, with their hopes and dreams and their pearly blue eyeshadow.

The invitation used to be "come west" and take on our sophisticated capitalist look. Scrub that face, lose that blusher. The secrets of the "natural look", that miracle created with matt brown and peach, were explained.

No longer. That was just Cold War thinking. Now, no sooner have Eastern girls learned Western ways than they find themselves in the hands of a make-up artist smudging on something pearly and gooey just like back home. And they are being collared by make-up artists begging them to stock up with sparkling supplies of pinks and blues next time they go home to visit mother.

The jars and bottles, the eyeshadows and the hair rollers you see on these pages come from Russia, Poland and the former East Germany. And they have their drawbacks. You need to be a linguist. A Russian model realised just in time that one make-up artist's fabulous newly imported "hair gel" was, in fact, boot polish, and that the "cleanser" was, in fact, hair remover.

Others, in search of the spangly make-up they so desperately want but which is in short supply this side of the Danube, have taken a different approach. Francois Nars, one of the top make-up artists, friend of Madonna and the usual clutch of supermodels, could no longer find the Technicolor sheen he wanted, so he launched his own make-up collection, full of just the kind of pearly products Olga and Eva, Lidija and Irina, successful Eastern models all, thought they had left behind