She struts into the Ivy with leg to spare and a long ponytail swinging behind her. She’s working a super short, silver polka-dot dress, which she designed herself, and some gooey lip-gloss. She’s got a makeup artist in tow, along with two publicists and a bodyguard.

Is it Paris? Miley? Ivanka?

No, it’s Kira Plastinina, a 15-year-old Russian fashion designer, and if everything goes as planned, she’s going to be the next “it” girl.

“When I was really little, people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up,” she says, “First I said a princess, then I said a fashion designer. I’m not grown up, but I am a fashion designer!”

Plastinina is a phenom in progress. She’s just in from Russia, where in the last year she opened 40 stores bankrolled by her millionaire daddy, Sergei Plastinin, one of Russia’s largest dairy producers worth of more than $500 million. Six months ago, she had a fashion show with Paris Hilton in the front row. And she’s already had three Women’s Wear Daily stories; Teen Vogue is calling her a “teen tycoon” and “the talk of the town in her homeland.”

Her first U.S. store opened in New York, recently. In the U.S., the goal is 50 Kira Plastinina stores in the next three years, and eventually 250.

Part of the first, post-Communist generation, Plastinina — who speaks almost perfect English, attends an international school and adores TV shows Gossip Girl and The Hills — represents a new fashion identity for Russia. Her clothes, with an average $48 price point, are fast fashion targeting teens that live their lives online, where image is reality and international borders are nonexistent.

When Plastinina staged her first fashion show in March 2007, it looked like a Soviet-era parody with ‘80s throwback T-shirts, short-shorts, outsized bows and winged models. In October 2007, she had Hilton in her front row — for a reported $2 million fee. By March 2008, she was showing a full collection of sweet teen clothing in a slickly produced runway production that was documented in a MTV Russia special, A Day in the Life With Kira.

Not that any of it holds water with the fashion folk. “If there is any demand for her line,” sniffs Alyona Isayeva, fashion editor of Russian Harper’s Bazaar. “It’s mostly in the far-flung provinces.”

Last week, in LA Plastinina looked completely at home. She was wearing her own line, as she usually does, including a $34 rhinestone studded denim miniskirt and a cobalt blue patent leather bag with tortoise handles that packed a lot of style for $48.

Just weeks shy of her 16th birthday on June 1, Plastinina still carries herself like a girl, not a woman. She would rather talk friendship bracelets (“One of my friends has the same birthday as mine on the same hour!”) and pet miniature pigs (“I want one for my birthday”), than designer clothes and marketing strategy.

One day, Plastinina hopes to attend fashion school in London or New York, but this summer, she’ll be working in L.A.
-Booth Moore