Ex-spy Anna Chapman launches new line of clothing

Former Russian spy Anna Chapman unveiled her new line of casual clothing at a show in the Turkish resort of Antalya today. The flame-haired 31-year-old did not design the collection of pencil and floor-length dresses herself but hired a team of up-and-coming designers from Russian fashion schools for her eponymous label. “She really wanted to make clothes that you could wear anywhere, from a big city to a backwater village,” a spokesperson for Fund Service Bank, the Russian bank where Chapman works as an advisor, told RIA Novosti.

A text about her new label for fashion website Moda, written in a somewhat whimsical style, explains that the idea for Chapman’s new business venture first came to her three years ago after she returned to Russia from “captivity in a prisoner’s shirt”. At the time, Chapman had just been deported from the US after it had been discovered she was spying for a Russian intelligence agency.

The text adds that the “alien garb” was not right for Chapman who set off in search of a style of Russian dress that was “dear to her heart”. “Her path was difficult, winding, like that of the heroines of Russian fairytales,” it notes. “Anna had to cross nine kingdoms three times to discover all the secrets of foreign masters and more than once she pricked her finger on a spindle before learning to weave magical, multi-coloured fabrics, in the latest shades of European fashions.” The text ends on a happy, if somewhat nationalist note with the “frog princess” being transformed into a beautiful maiden and Russia becoming “a great power … a textile power.”

Chapman was arrested in New York in 2010 along with nine others who had all been part of a spy ring for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. She subsequently shot to fame and has appeared in numerous fashion shoots and even featured in her own Russian television show about aliens and ghosts. Last year, she tweeted a marriage proposal to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.