



1 / 6 Chevron Chevron Photographed by Alena Chendler Narvskayadostava designer Olya Shapovalova holding up a T-shirt with President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump.

After the United States presidential election, there was a reported surge in the production of President Donald Trump paraphernalia in Russia. Weird? Not so much. Celebration in the form of Trump-themed products is expected: Right now, Russia likes Trump, and the country promotes whomever they love politically, in every sense. Like his wife Melania, who has been celebrated in her native Slovenia in the form of soap and cake, Trump has made some buyable cameos in Russia: Want a cute matryoshka, a Russian nesting doll, with a portrait of the 45th President? Just come to Moscow and throw down a handful of rubles. The same sort of merchandising power lies with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. While souvenir shopping last year, I saw a buff, half-in-the-buff Putin everywhere: He was shirtless on a horse in Matrix-like sunglasses, beaming on posters, magnets, plates, and vodka glasses. If someone wanted, they could decorate their house with all things Putin.

Fast forward a year later; I’m back in Moscow on a press trip. With Trump in office, the mood here isn’t necessarily pro-America, but it’s quite a change from when former President Barack Obama was in power: Back then—just a few months ago—there were T-shirts showing him and Angela Merkel being chastised by Putin. Now, the majority of people seem relatively happy and optimistic about Trump’s win. “He’s a man,” one of my cab drivers tells me. This conversation seems to always be the same among cab drivers (even in Ukraine, Russia’s political nemesis!): According to most of them, Trump knows and does what he wants. (I’ve heard similar statements before: The conservative, working-class members of my family talk about Trump with the same degree of disregard for facts in favor for a strong emphasis on attractive-sounding “truthiness.” The women specifically are enamored with the idea that Trump “waits for no one” and is “a do-er!”) In Russia, people channel that optimism for Trump—as they do with Putin—with celebrity-style adulation: At a mall in the outskirts of Moscow, there is supposedly a Hollywood Walk of Fame–style Trump star—but so far, unlike here stateside, no one has taken a pickax to the president’s sidewalk plaque.

Of course, Trump’s election has provoked a different response from alternative-minded young people in metropolitan cities. The fashion label Narvskayadostava by Olya Shapovalova and Lolja Nordic, a feminist designer duo who live in St. Petersburg, has had some things to say: Their latest shirt says “Menstruation” in a rock ’n’ roll font. For International Women’s Day on March 8th—a holiday in Russia known for the gifting of candy and flowers and, as Putin himself recently demonstrated, praising women’s beauty—Shapovalova and Nordic spent their time protesting for women’s rights in the center of Saint Petersburg, an event which prompted mass arrests and unruly police behavior.

This comes on the heels of Putin’s recent decriminalization of domestic abuse for first-time offenders. Nonetheless, the majority of women in Russia seem to still like and respect Putin—and, it follows, Trump. I ask Shapovalova and Nordic why that might be the case. “Many somehow think that Putin and Trump share their views on politics; I can hardly explain that point of view. But it seems to me that for many people in Russia, Trump is a symbol of some unattainable success. They see him as strong man who earned millions and built his own corporation and now also became a president,” Nordic writes. “Such a perfect embodiment of traditional patriarchal male ambitions.”