War and Fashion

Credentials of the Elite

The fashion industry, by its very fickleness, is a weather vane of political favour. Commentary on a dictator’s wardrobe or his wife’s hairstyle can become a powerful tool of coercion while maintaining plausible deniability about political approval. International court orders and trade embargoes don't hit at the Achilles heel of a mighty despot who has to share his pillow with a capricious narcissist who reads Paris Match.

The West has a patchy record of leveraging its own brands in its own interests, let alone anyone else’s. Even now, furious commentary erupts over the way in which Jim Callaghan’s socialist government persuaded Queen Elizabeth II to roll out the red carpet for Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1978. The international endorsement did nothing to help the oppressed Romanian people and everything to inflate their government's sense of self-righteous legitimacy. Ceaușescu's semi-literate wife, Elena, overplayed her cards by demanding membership of the British Academy, which was denied her. Years later, when the grisly Romanian regime fell and the Ceaușescu's palace was plundered, the portraiture confirmed what many had suspected. Romania’s First Lady - the ‘great scientist of international esteem’ - was fixated on mimicking the style of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Assad Debacle

All of this comes to bear on the curious relationship between Vogue, Vanity Fair, and the gloss they have applied to certain thin, rich and powerful women in the Middle East. Even before The Syrian Baathist regime was overthrown last year, Vogue were being run up the mast for a 2011 profile they ran on Asma Al Assad, the wife of the now deposed Syrian dictator, Bashar al Assad.

"Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic--the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She's a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her "the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.'" - Vogue.

It has emerged that this profile was arranged in a $5,000 deal between the Syrian government and the Brown Lloyd James PR firm. The piece was quickly purged from Vogue's site and its author condemned by papers such as the Guardian. The record of both the article and the cynical opportunism behind it is largely maintained today by The Atlantic.

There but for God go a great number of glossy magazines.

Over a decade later, the Spectator still asks whether Vogue will apologise. But it is hard to be sanctimonious about the debacle when the broader fashion industry refuse to use their influence over people who are still in power.

An Ongoing Issue

Sheikha Moza Al-Thani is the mother of the Emir of Qatar; arguably the wealthiest country in the world. She and her family own vast tracts of central London and pretty much live in glossy magazines. Like many state doyennes, she cultivates a glamorous humanitarian image for herself, sycophantically promoted by the press, whitewashing her endorsement of terrorists.

On October 7th 2023, when Hamas took 251 hostages to Gaza after their bloody massacre in Israel, Sheikha Moza remained very clear about whose side she was on.

'Oh Allah, we entrust Palestine to you,' her social media accounts proclaimed, as she railed against the Israeli response. Despite her grievances over somewhat unreliable casualty figures in Gaza, she did nothing to demand the return of the hostages and, furthermore, when the IDF finally managed to corner and take out Yahya Sinwar in October last year, Sheikha Moza was full of praise for the Hamas commander.

Sheikha Moza goes around collecting brands, awards and humanitarian positions like fridge magnets and has even picked up the support of Buckingham Palace.

Indeed, the very publication which scrutinises Vogue for applying its gloss to Asma al Assad have also gushed in support of Sheikha Moza.

"As chairwoman of the multibillion-dollar Qatar Foundation and Qatar Luxury Group she appeared in in Vanity Fair’s international best dressed list in 2009 and 2012 and was named as one of Forbes’ "100 Most Powerful Women. In 2003, she was appointed as UNESCO’s Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education and in 2008 the Secretary General of the UN appointed her as Alliance of Civilizations Ambassador. In June 2009, she was inducted into the dilettante Académie des Beaux Arts de l'Institut de France. In 2010, she bought Harrods and became a member of the UN Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group with a special emphasis universal primary education. In addition, she has expanded her fashion portfolio in recent years, buying Valentino in 2012. In 2019 was among the 17 public figures appointed by the UN to spearhead its Sustainable Development Goals." - excerpt from Sheikha Moza's Business of Fashion website.

Successful humanitarian PR flow naturally to where wealth and power are secure. Nevertheless, serious journalists will continue to smell corruption in the fickle winds of fashion. Even as the Assad family cower in exile, questions are being asked about the treatment of Christian minorities in the country they left behind. The first wave of optimism for the Syrian revolution has passed and, if there is not a second, perhaps Vogue won’t have to apologise after all.

Indeed, perhaps their vindication might bring one or two other publications up with a start, or even inspire them to question the objects of their praise today.

Read next: The Persecution of Christians in Syria

Alexander Shaw

Journalist