Fashion designer for Russian first ladies dies

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s most famous fashion designer, Vyacheslav Zaitsev, who dressed the country’s first ladies, has died at the age of 85. An obituary published by the TASS news agency said he died after a long illness but didn’t state when. According to other Russian media reports, he was taken to a hospital in the Moscow region with stomach bleeding and died in intensive care. Zaitsev was born in a Soviet Union where much of the standard attire was gray, outdated and unimaginative. He rocketed to fame in his homeland — and to some extent the world — when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife Raisa wore his creations in the 1980s and early 1990s.