Luxist

Six months ago, 16-year-old Russian fashion designer Kira Plastinina was having her U.S. launch party. Her pink-festooned stores opened in New York and Los Angeles and she appeared on MTV's TRL. Fast forward to now, TRL is no more and Kira Plastinina is closing almost all of her 12 U.S. outlets after being open less than a year. Sergei Plastinin, Kira's rich father, tells Bloomberg that the numbers of shoppers in the U.S. fell significantly and because of the banking crisis it also become much harder to get money for growing the chain.. The U.S. backing company has filed for bankruptcy. 02/01/09