Alla Verber, a retail executive who paved the way for the arrival of Western luxury brands in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and helped modernize the country’s leading department stores, died on Aug. 6 while on vacation in the seaside town of Forte dei Marmi in Tuscany, Italy. She was 61 .

The cause was complications of blood cancer, which Ms. Verber learned she had a decade ago, a spokeswoman for TSUM , Moscow’s leading department store, said.

Ms. Verber, who lived in Moscow, was the fashion director for both TSUM and the historic DLT department store in St. Petersburg, both holdings of the Mercury Group, Russia’s largest luxury retail goods distributor. She was a vice president of the company.

At times called the most powerful woman in Russian fashion, Ms. Verber was a fashion industry veteran of 40 years and a flamboyant front-row fixture at international runway shows. In 2008, The Guardian quoted the Condé Nast editorial director Anna Harvey as calling Ms. Verber “the most important buyer in the world right now.”