Daily Times

ST PETERSBURG: Twenty fashion designers from Russia, Bulgaria, Belarus and Kazakhstan presented their Plus Size collections for women at the Plus Size Week Fest 2016 in St Petersburg, which started on Saturday.

The festival will also host a beauty contest among women with XL size and bigger. The organisers believe that many plus-sized women’s rejection of their beauty is just the result of low self-esteem and doesn’t represent men’s real attitude, because beauty can be very different. The Plus Size Week Fest 2016 will last for two days.

Saint Petersburg is Russia’s second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject. Situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 27, 1703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, and in 1991 back to Saint Petersburg. Between 1713-1728 and 1732-1918, Saint Petersburg was the imperial capital of Russia. In 1918, the central government bodies moved to Moscow.

Saint Petersburg is the most Westernised city of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site.