The fashion community worldwide is not known to get into political wrangles. But the New York Fashion Week this time did – it booted out the daughter of Uzbekistan’s dictator who had planned to unveil her spring fashion line at the event.
The organisers of the New York Fashion Week cancelled the show of Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzebekistan’s authoritarian leader Islam Karimov, after intense pressure from groups like the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).
According to HRW, “Her father’s government forces up to two million Uzbek children to leave school for two months each year to pick cotton – a fabric woven throughout Karimova’s designs. Karimova maintains a jet-setter lifestyle, which includes making a pop video with Julio Iglesias and launching her fashion line Guli.”
The rights group kept the pressure till the end. It reached out to senior management at IMG, the event organiser, and the Fashion Week’s main sponsors, Mercedes-Benz. – providing examples of the abuses that our Uzbekistan researchers documented on the ground. HRW tied up with organisations like International Labour Rights Forum and the American Federation of Teachers, which have successfully convinced Gap, H&M, and other major retailers to pledge that they won’t buy Uzbek cotton.
Human Rights Watch hit where it hurts. Its Executive Director Kenneth Roth apprised IMG’s top management about the risks to the event’s reputation when someone who represents a highly abusive government is a participant. Then came a damning story “Dressed to Kill: Daughter of Murderous Dictator to Unveil Spring Line at Fashion Week” on the opening day of the event in the New York Post. The story had been pitched by the rights group. The organisers could not stay mute any more – they cancelled the event.
Karimova moved her show to the Cipriani's restaurant in Manhattan, but was followed by protesters. The event was held, but the designer was missing from the 300-odd present.
Karimov has ruled without opposition since 1989, imprisoning dissidents and, allegedly, boiling two opponents alive. His bloody crackdown on a rare burst of unrest in the city of Andijan in 2005 left 187 people dead, according to official figures, or many hundreds, according to rights groups. Uzbekistan has also long been accused of using forced child labor in its all-important cotton growing industry, one of the world's biggest. The Uzbek government denies this, saying in June that accusations were "mendacious insinuations and fabrications."
For long the fashion community had kept itself insulated from all controversies, especially the ones with political hues. Designers and brands are still slowly waking up to environmental realities. But it is the first time that a prestigious fashion event anywhere in the world has taken a drastic step over human rights issues.
