The Dictator's Daughter Who's Showing at Fashion Week
Guli is one of the many new lines of clothing debuting at New York Fashion Week. However, it's probably the only one designed by a woman whose father is accused of being one of the world's worst dictators.
Gulnara Karimova is the designer of Guli, a line of clothing that uses traditional fabrics from Uzbekistan, the same country that's been ruled by her father, Islam Karimov, since 1990. Karimov—who's been called one of the world's worst dictators on more than one occasion—has been accused over the years of the systematic torture of the population (including boiling people alive), censoring the press, and holding rigged elections designed to keep him and his friends in power. Not the typical pedigree for a fashion designer, clearly.
Karimova showed off her new collection—featuring a bunch of multicolored, almost hippie-inspired looks for both men and women—in the tents at Lincoln Center today. No word about any protests. But if PETA throws red paint on fashion designers that use fur, you'd think someone would do something about a line that supports human torture.