Why the Russians are invading Courchevel
This season, the most exclusive Alpine resort is even more of a magnet for partying oligarchs, says Helen Kirwan-taylor
There are benefits to being a Russian speaker: eavesdropping, for one. As we boarded our flight to Geneva last week, I couldn’t help but listen in to the conversation between two blondes in the row before us. They were heading to Courchevel, but I could have guessed that from their Fendi moon boots and Chanel Shearling backpacks. As they were flying British Airways (and not Netjets), I suspected these Russian ladies weren’t oligarch wives, but mistresses – or plain-old escorts.
What was clear from their chatter was they were going to Courchevel to party. You would have thought, what with the TV constantly showing images of Russian tanks lining up along Ukraine’s borders, that they might want to hide in their bomb-proof Holland Park basements, clutching the business card of their Credit Suisse bankers. Talk of war, sanctions and repercussions didn’t seem to faze this lot one little bit.
Maybe it’s because according to Rupert Longsdon, of the Oxford Ski Company – who rents chalets in Courchevel for up to €300,000 (£250,000) a week – these are “international Russians”. I presume many ‘‘Russian
Russians’’ can’t travel abroad much, not least because the EU doesn’t accept their ‘‘Sputnik’’ vaccine. (Instead, they reportedly flock to Serbia – which allows visa-free travel – to access Western-made Covid jabs.) Christmas and January should be peak skiing months for Russians: February is when the Globo-russians, many of whom reside in London, arrive at the Alpine resorts.
At Le Cap Horn in Courchevel – sits oldest mountain restaurant, which is party central for Russians and where you’re expected to tip in gold bullion – ladies danced on tables in clearly never-worn-before Prada and Chloé ski suits as their hosts swigged down Dom Pérignon. “There we were, checking our phones for updates on the Ukraine crisis, while the Russians partied like Rome was burning,” says a friend.
To give you even more of an idea, Le Cap Horn has a gift shop that sells Hermès handbags. “At one point, a Russian man appeared handing them out to the girls dancing on tables, who way outnumbered the men,” they add. “Lots of people were taping them, but they didn’t seem to care.” Le Cap Horn’s seafoodand-sushi menu is printed in French and Russian. If like us, you are English-speaking, regular guests, you can now expect to be seated by the loo – if they bother taking your reservation at all. The last time we were at the restaurant, five years ago, my husband paid in
hundred euro bills and asked for change. The waiter laughed.
Courchevel has long been the resort of choice for Russian billionaires. Roman Abramovich led the way, and others followed – most notably entrepreneurs Vladimir Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov. Courchevel has been nicknamed “Courchevelsky”.
“It’s hard to find a place to park your private jet these days,” says Longsdon, who explains that Courchevel is now the place to be for Russians for two reasons. One: they don’t have to rent their chalets out (as you do by law in, say, Austria, to maintain the community). And two: ski resorts is where “business is done”.
“A lot people meet in private chalets, where they are not overheard,” he says. “They can sit down with clients at a table and talk openly.” Such privacy cannot be assured in a Russian dacha. I’ve heard many stories. One Russian family apparently rented puppies for their children as a Christmas gift, requiring redecorating a room with astroturf, and full-time dog trainers at £3,000 per day.
Another chalet was the scene of a spontaneous drunken egg-and-pan baseball game, resulting in more than £25,000 worth of damage. Staff put up with it because the tips are the same as they are on yachts – namely, 10 per cent of what the chalet cost to rent, though Russians tip twice the going rate.
According to another eyewitness at the resort for half-term, “it was crazy”. Writer Rhymer Rigby, who was staying in the nearby La Tania, where oligarchs helicopter in for lunch, says: “I saw a Louis Vuitton-branded yurt from my Gucci-branded gondola.”
Notable also was how many fur-clad Russian ladies had their own photographers in tow. “The outfits were particularly good this year,” says a PR friend, whose family own a chalet. “Very Instagrammy.” Maybe they want to make memories before their foreign assets are frozen and, as some MPS have suggested, their children thrown out of British boarding schools.
Courchevel was “our resort” for more than a decade, until Abramovich and his entourage alighted upon it (he apparently viewed every chalet in town, bidding way above the asking price, thereby fixing prices at oligarch levels. He also owns a chalet in Aspen, I’m told.)
Our hotel in Courchevel was a favourite half-term destination. A British ski company looked after the children, allowing us to spend hours watching the (then) beautiful people at Le Cap Horn.
Within a few years, we noticed that our hotel was filling up with loud, wealthy Russians, who booked a guide for each member of the family and kept them waiting all day in the ski room (no apology), while they nursed hangovers in their penthouse suites.
Then restaurants began printing menus in Russian at the same time as prices doubled. Stories of hookers soon followed. You didn’t need a translator then (or now) to figure out what all well-endowed ladies hanging out in the lobbies of the highest-end hotels were up to.
Courchevel boasts many British regulars, including David Beckham, who was there recently – but, truth be told, it’s a segregated resort now. “We never go to the big restaurants on the piste, and we never go into town because it’s ridiculous,” says a designer friend, who has been skiing there since she was four. “We would never go out at night, that’s for sure – and we can’t afford it. We spend the whole week avoiding the Russians.”
This year, with kids in tow, we tried a new French resort, Val-d’isère, with a Courchevel refugee as our guide. “The Russians have ruined Courchevel,” he says. “But their children are coming here. They are less showy – and sportier.”
Judging from the mother of enormous chalets that was being constructed behind ours, and the rapidly expanding five-star hotel scene, surely it’s only a matter of time before it becomes “Valsidreski”.