Gatchina, one of the former suburban Royal residences near St. Petersburg and the seat of a felt boot factory, premiered a show-and French, German and Russian fashion houses showered the company with orders for fancy exclusive items.

18th century Russian Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Catherine the Great sported felt boots with the most exquisite attire. Now, glamorous ladies wear boots embroidered in silk, beads and paste gems, or with lace, brocade and tapestry applications.

The 16th Moscow Fashion Week, in October 2006, presented a thousand pairs of handmade boots by Lyudmila Chernikova. All sold within a week.

It appears a Russian comic folk song about "down-at-heel felt boots" is no longer relevant.

Three colors were previously customary for felt boots, made of the roughest wool-gray, black and white. Now, the selection includes a glowing saffron, emerald green, deep claret or velvety purple, and made of the finest wool.

Yelena Pelevina, founder of the Russian Fashion House in Moscow, makes her chic boots of camel wool. Designer boots are good enough for the most glamorous parties. Felt shoes rimmed with tapestry and spangled with paste jewels are this season's hit. Siberian traders offer fur-lined boots at 10,000 rubles, or $400, a pair. Such boots follow centuries-tested footwear made by Khanty, an indigenous tribe, for the biting local frost, and are within the world fashion industry ethnic mainstream.

Russian felt boots appear on the world's top catwalks this fall/winter. "History knows no footwear warmer and comfier than felt boots made to order, with their flat nose and sheath top," Moscow designer Yulia Nikolayeva comments her collection. Top models buy the boots they demonstrate. Gianfranco Ferre's are in the greatest demand.

VIPs wear felt boots themselves, and buy them for their children, especially soft bootees for toddlers. Fashion magazines offer advice how to embroider and otherwise decorate children's boots.

Felt boots are a Turkic invention. The oldest extant, from the 4th century B.C., were found in the Pazyryk burial mound in the Altai Mountains in the south of Siberia.

There are references to felt boots in The Lay of Igor's Host, 12th century Russian literary masterpiece. Peasant families passed on felt boots from generation to generation-they were as expensive as fur clothes worn in severe Russian winter. It took an experienced clothier to make really good boots, lasting, comfortable and without a single seam. The old know-how is demonstrated in the two felt boot museums-in Myshkin, Central Russia, and the village of Urusovo, Mordovia, in the Volga area.

The Gatchina factory puts out 30,000 pairs a year to sell them all over Russia, and current modernization promises to send the output up. How ever many appear on offer will surely sell as hot cakes, warm, light and moisture-absorbing as they are. The best known of felt boot manufacturers, of Veliky Ustyug in European Russia's north, started diversifying its product range at the very start of the 21st century. Moscow has only one small factory, in Bitsa. Foreign ambassadors' wives visited its boutique all together one fine day-and each bought several pairs. French ladies were the best buyers. Tourists from France soon followed en masse.

"Siberian felt boot" is one of the Russian analogues for "country bumpkin" or "hillbilly." The phrase may become something of a compliment now that Europe sports boots a la russe.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Olga Sobolevskaya)