Synthetic lace lingerie ban prompts street protests in Russia and Kazakhstan

18.02.2014
    By Roland Oliphant
    Lingerie outlets across Russia may have to bin most of their stock under a bizarre trade directive that bans the import, production or sale of synthetic lace underwear.
    A law affecting the Eurasian Union, the EU-style trade bloc made up of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, means that lacy ladies’ underwear may disappear fr om shop shelves in all three countries on July 1.
    Like many of its most notorious EU counterparts, the legislation has ostensibly good intentions. It is aimed at protecting consumers from cheap materials that could have a negative health impact.
    But lazy wording by the bureaucrats means that instead of tackling only the use of low-quality synthetic fibres, it will outlaw any underwear made of non-natural material that does not meet a 6 per cent absorption threshold.
    Experts have said that means Russia’s lingerie outlets – which range from jaw-droppingly expensive luxury boutiques to metro-underpass stalls – will have to bin 90 per cent of their stock if the law is not amended.
    The regulation is not new – the law in question was actually introduced in 2012. But it hit the headlines in Russia when the minister responsible complained that producers had not taken advantage of the two-year period of grace to prepare for the changes.
    “None of these requirements are new, they already exist. Colleagues should have adjusted production accordingly. But they’re making out that it’s all new to them,” Valery Koreshkov, Russia’s minister for technical regulation of the Eurasian economic commission, told Russian news agency Itar Tass.
    The comments provoked a storm in the Russian media, and protests elsewhere in the union. Kazakh police arrested three women after they tried to put lace knickers on a statue in Almaty on Sunday.
    “I came out with my last pair of lace undies, which will soon be banned not only here, but in every country of the Customs Union,” one of the women told reporters after her release. The three were fined about