“Model boys stood along the entire train”: how the legendary Dolores Kondrashova lived

Dolores Kondrashova passed away, she was called the beauty queen. And it’s true – she was a queen in everything: in a profession where she had no equal, and in a life that she so desperately loved. The royal title was given to her not by birth, but by what she did for the country and for many generations who connected their lives with the beauty industry.

This little woman, as tall as the Soviet screen Cinderella Yanina Zheymo, 148 cm, was really the first in everything. She was the first profession in the sphere of consumer services, which was not very respected, brought into the sphere of art. She was the first to gather a team of hairdressers, which began to perform at the European and World Championships. The Dolores team was called nothing more than a team of champions. She was the first to open an academy, where she trained hairdressers from all over the country, setting them new standards for the profession. Finally, the first in the new Russia began to organize the festival “World of Beauty” – the scope, fantasy, taste of the forum of hairdressers of a large country could be the envy of show business.

Dolores Kondrashova knew the whole world of beauty outside of Russia. More than once, I witnessed how, at the World Championships, which were then held in countries that were still friendly to us, presidents and directors of the most prestigious cosmetic brands and fashion houses rushed to her. They appreciated her: both business qualities and personal ones. We knew that Dolores is a reliable partner from Russia, whose word can be trusted. Well, as for the personality… A charismatic personality, seemingly small, but inaccessible. And they called her, as a beloved child, Dolochka. And students, and friends, and partners.

Dolores’ personality traits… How do you define them? The most paradoxical thing is that she, a hairdresser, remained a man of the theater until the end of her days. She, in fact, was them. The theater was certainly musical: she loved music, jazz, opera, without a special education, she could pick up any melody on the piano. Her theater was inexpressibly beautiful because its mistress was a willing slave of beauty. She did everything for her: Dolores’ hairdressing salon was not like a hairdressing salon, even the most expensive one. In the 90s, when she opened it in the alleys of the old Arbat, people just came there to look. Because it is a palace where only champions work. Glass roof, transitions, luxurious, which are only in opera houses, chandeliers, an elevator, many flowers and live music that sounds until the last visitor. Luxury is not for the sake of luxury, but only for the sake of beauty.

Her “World of Beauty” was the same, so all the shows that she prepared for the championships looked like. For the contestants, she invited masters from Europe – her masters should be the first. How is she. For the sake of this, she did not spare herself, for which one day the retribution came – a stroke that happened to her on the rise of her career (not only Russian, but also international). He deprived her of freedom of movement, speech, but did not force her to give up beauty. That’s when everyone finally realized that the queen has an iron character and an iron will. Sedentary, barely speaking, as soon as she recovered from the blow, the first thing she asked was to send her cosmetics and a beautician from the salon. She always looked her best, as if she was preparing to go to the opera or to a reception for Her Majesty.

And the breadth of Dolores’ soul is still legendary. She didn’t know what small numbers were, didn’t understand how to give one flower: not a bouquet, but a basket, a friend or girlfriend received a birthday, and not an anniversary. When she turned 70, friends and everyone she wanted to see that day received an invitation to go to St. Petersburg, to the Konstantinovsky Palace – and where else can the queen walk? Both the departure of the Moscow-St. Petersburg train, in which two or three carriages were occupied by Dolores’ guests, and its arrival in the city on the Neva, were furnished and staged by her magnificently, in a theatrical way. The guests only had time to marvel at the military bands at the railway stations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as at the handsome model boys who stood with umbrellas along the entire train, meeting and seeing off Dolores’ guests.

Someone will say: “Of course, if you have money, why not allow yourself to walk like that?” The fact of the matter is that not everyone can afford to part with money – one might say, a few. And Dolores did it with joy and gratitude to the people with whom she grew up, who accompanied her, helped her. She gladly gave. And in November 2021, when she turned 85, she invited forty friends to the United Arab Emirates, gave them a week of vacation on the coast.

Orphaned her salon, the Academy of Hairdressing in Bolshoy Afanasevsky Lane – the first such educational institution, whose graduates now work throughout the country. Dolores has remained in each of them as a reference point of high professionalism, setting them a level for life. And as a person who has become a reference point in many ways.

Her departure came as a complete surprise to many. It would seem that at the end of November, on her birthday, Dolores gathered her friends in a cool restaurant and gave them a great gastronomic show. I met the New Year and only the last two weeks I began to feel bad: old sores made themselves felt. But she didn’t suffer. On Sunday, closer to midnight, she lost consciousness. The ambulance, which was called by the household, took her to the 85th clinic, and there, without regaining consciousness, Dolores Kondrashova died.

Obviously, she had a presentiment of her departure, but she did not tell anyone, even her closest ones, about it. Only in the last days of her life did she begin to repeat that Jos, her beloved husband, who died of coronavirus two years ago, was waiting for her. Now they meet…

And now it became known where the farewell to Dolores Kondrashova will take place – on January 26 at 12.00 in the Central Clinical Hospital at the address: st. Tymoshenko, 25. She will be buried at the Vostryakovsky cemetery, next to the grave of her beloved spouse.