cold case; Moscow winters seem to be getting warmer-but that doesn't stop a chic Muscovite from wearing sable or mink with her micromini.

Byline: Lynn Yaeger

For years people thought Russian women wore nothing but babushkas, and then suddenly everyone decided we all looked like prostitutes," laughs Alla Verber, the VP of Mercury, a company that owns more than 40 stores in Moscow (including TSUM, the Russian answer to Bergdorf's), as she strolls down Tretyakovsky Passage, a shopping street near Red Square with shimmering lights overhead that turn it into a fairyland furnished with Prada and Gucci shops.

It's a relatively balmy December night, which means it's in the high 20s, with intermittent, picturesque snow-a constant fluttery presence here from November to March. Alla is doing a little late shopping: In this style-obsessed town, stores are open until 10:00 p.m. She is dressed, in her words, "quite simply," in a tight black ensemble by Dolce & Gabbana topped by a stupendous shearling overcoat and, winking from her hand, a Graff emerald-cut diamond that would shame Elizabeth Taylor; her friend Irina is a vision in sable and Hermes.

As we ogle the parade of chic shoppers, a motif emerges: fur, fur, and more fur-in elaborate pieced and patterned coats, in mink newsboy hats atop perfectly coiffed heads, in the fox rims of high velvet boots. This is no doubt due in part to the city's infamous climate, but even when the temperature is above freezing, cloth coats are few and far between. (Contrast this with, say, England, where no matter how severe the cold snap you rarely see even the skimpiest fur collar or cuff. For political reasons and, one guesses, regional aesthetics, there's nary a pelt from Land's End to John o'Groats.)

And while global warming is certainly a topic of conversation in Moscow, as it is everywhere-the deep snows of yesterday have, according to the locals, considerably receded here, as they seem to have across the north-this is a city that identifies itself through Doctor Zhivago reveries and winter-wonderland hyperbole.

Of course, Russia's monumentally showy furs aren't only about keeping warm. Another explanation for elaborate overwrapping is the soon-apparent fact that Muscovites dress for morning the way the rest of the world dresses

for evening.