Diamond life: the year's top fashion scandals

HIGH-VOLTAGE DRAMA

Naomi Campbell has been in the news again. This time, the notoriously abusive super model isn’t being written about for violently assaulting someone – the model nicknamed the “black panther” was slapped with a felony charge in 2006 for throwing a Swarovski-encrusted mobile phone at her housekeeper’s head.

Rather, this time, she is at the centre of a row over blood diamonds, precious stones that are illegally mined in war zones and countries ruled by dictators such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Prosecutors allege Campbell received a present of at least one large uncut diamond from former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who is currently on trial at the The Hague Tribunal for war crimes, including charges of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

She was allegedly handed the diamond at a dinner in South Africa in August 1997. Campbell, as might be expected, denies the charges, and at the time of going to press, was yet to testify in court on August 5.

However, actress Mia Farrow, who was also at the dinner, insists that the exchange did indeed occur and told ABC News that Campbell had an unforgettable story at breakfast the next morning:

“She told us she had been awakened in the night by knocking at her door. She opened the door to find two or three men – I do not recall how many – who presented her with a large diamond which they said was from Charles Taylor… you don’t forget when a girlfriend tells you that she was given a huge diamond in the middle of the night.”

Speaking to Oprah about the incident, the supermodel said simply: “I don’t want to be involved in this man’s case — he has done some terrible things and I don’t want to put my family in danger.”

Perhaps because of its high-voltage glamour, scandal and intrigue are never far away from the ramp, and the fashion world has always attracted unscrupulous and unsavoury types. Massive inheritance battles are often fought in public, while fashion suicides hit the headlines with unfailing regularity. And all of that is only the big stuff – when the headlines aren’t dominated by such high-stakes stuff, the industry is being criticised for idealising completely unrealistic body shapes, ignoring minority sections of the market, exploiting children in sweatshops and generally inciting outrage by pushing some new limit.

Pop singer Madonna, for example, has just launched a clothing line with her 13-year-old daughter Lourdes. Aimed at teenagers, it has already been roundly criticised for sexualising young girls and blurring the line between childhood and adulthood through an advertising campaign that features low-cut mini dresses and fishnet tights.

But that’s small stuff compared to some of the other controversies swirling around fashion ramps this year.

One continuing theme this year has been the sheer number of violent deaths hitting the industry. Most prominent, of course, has been avant-garde designer Lee McQueen, who was found hanging in his Central London flat this February. The founder of the cutting-edge label Alexander McQueen committed suicide almost exactly a week after his mother died and three years after the death of his close friend, stylist Isabella Blow, who plucked him from obscurity and made him a star. Clinical depression and self-medication were both offered up as explanations as to why he might have killed himself, but the real reason may never truly be known.

As statistics go, McQueen was only one in a series of deaths to rock the industry since last November, when South Korean model Daul Kim (20) hanged herself in her Paris apartment. In April American Ambrose Olsen (24) was found dead in his New York home while in May Marks and Spencer’s model Noémie Lenoir (30) tried to kill herself in Paris with a lethal drink and drugs cocktail.

Poor lil’ rich kids

In June, 22-year-old French model Tom Nicon also committed suicide: by jumping from the window of his fourth floor apartment hours before he was due to take part in a show at Milan Fashion Week. Reacting to the news, an anonymous post on the fashion website Isaac Likes shed light on a possible reason behind all the deaths: “People think we are young and beautiful and rich and happy. But we’re not. We go to castings and the directors take one look at us and then we’re dismissed. You spend your whole life wondering what’s wrong with you. Why didn’t I get that job? You’re competing with your friends, you’re away from your family. The pressure is huge. It’s not the fairytale life people would expect.”

For former Kama Sutra condoms model Viveka Babajee, the fairy tale was long over by the time she hanged herself from a ceiling fan in her Mumbai apartment this June.
A failing business and a broken love life loomed in the background.

Babajee’s family say she agreed to marry Gautam Vora, a 32-year-old stockbroker they say is her boyfriend, and later killed herself because he walked out on her. Despite Facebook photographs that suggest otherwise, Vora has consistently denied a serious relationship with the former Miss Mauritius. Both he and a friend, one Viren Shah, issued media denials that he was ever in a relationship with Babajee and that it was a prolonged depression that led her to take her life. Police are yet to conclude their investigations into the case.

Money is at the heart of several other high-profile fashion dramas this year.
Probably fashion’s richest but definitely its most quarrelsome family, the Guccis were in the news last month for all the wrong reasons. Elisabetta Gucci, the great-granddaughter of Gucci Group founder Guccio Gucci, was last month legally prevented for planning a group of hotels under her own name.

The chain, to have been called Elisabetta Gucci Hotels, was to begin operations with a flagship 87-room property in Dubai this year and open 40 properties worldwide over the next 15 years.

“According to the court’s order, all the counterparts have to immediately cease any use of the mark at issue as well as of the domain name ‘Elisabetta Gucci’ for any business or advertising purpose,” the fashion house said. “The court furthermore imposed a penalty for any possible violation of its order.”

As of late July, the Elisabetta Gucci website was no longer accessible.
But now Elisabetta Gucci wants to challenge the ruling, which it calls only a “preliminary judgment”, which, in any case, only applies within the European Union, according to Lorens Ziller, managing partner of Elisabetta Gucci Hotels.

“This preventive inhibitory judgment does not affect the project in Dubai or other projects in the Middle East, Far East, Africa and South America, which will carry on as planned,”  The National newspaper quoted him as saying.

The use of Elisabetta Gucci’s name “has caused customer confusion and has been harmful to Gucci’s business,” the fashion house said in a statement. The ruling by a Florence court “will hopefully act as a significant deterrent for those who intend to unlawfully license or commercially exploit the Gucci trademarks,” it added. “Gucci does not intend to let the power of its brand be diluted by counterfeiting or intellectual property infringements.”

Elisabetta should probably consider herself lucky to be facing a mere lawsuit, for the Gucci family have a notorious history of feuds, fights and somewhat darker affairs.
The group has also thwarted other members from using their own names to launch projects. Some years after the death of the late patriarch and former chief designer Paolo Gucci (who was Elisabetta’s father), another daughter called Gemma and his ex-wife Jennifer Gucci were legally barred from using the family name on a range of products. Which in itself is small stuff compared to the battle Paolo had with his father Aldo.

As the creator of the famous double G logo, Paolo maintained a long trademark battle against the company after it sacked him for his bad management practices, and when his father Aldo tried to stop him, Paolo simply reported him for tax evasion – which led to a prison sentence. Paolo himself also went to jail for failing to pay child support.

Glamour and greed

Perhaps the worst Gucci of all, though, as Sara Gay Forden points out in her book, House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed, was Patrizia Reggiani, who was jailed for 26 years in 1998 for arranging the murder of her estranged husband, Maurizio Gucci. When investigating the crime, Italian police found her diary, in which she had written “There is no crime that money cannot buy” – and, on the day he was shot, the single word entry read “paradise”. This tale of romance, murder and high fashion is now reportedly the subject of a new Ridley Scott film.

Yet another big money case was played out against the backdrop of the glamour world this summer.

In June, France watched in amazement as a L’Oréal family feud for control of an estimated $20 billion fortune collided with tax fraud allegations that roped in French labour minister Eric Woerth. The minutiae are endless, but suffice to say that Woerth was accused of receiving illegal cash donations from L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the richest woman in Europe, to fund French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign for office. The incident reportedly took place while his wife Florence worked for the heiress’s wealth manager and was sparked by secret tapes recorded by Bettencourt’s ex-butler, which suggested that the heiress hid millions of euros in Swiss bank accounts to avoid paying taxes.

It is estimated that she has $100m squirrelled away in Switzerland.
A subsequent government report cleared Woerth of directly intervening to ensure Bettencourt received a 30-million-euro tax rebate, but he was forced to step down as party treasurer and his wife resigned from her job.

The entire scandal was sparked by a smaller case filed by Bettencourt’s daughter, Francoise Meyers-Bettencourt, who accuses photographer Francois-Marie Banier of abusing her mother’s alleged mental frailty – and conning the heiress of one billion euros in cash, art and gifts.

We’ll leave you with a controversy that, compared to the ones listed above, is little more than a schoolyard scuffle.

After pop star Janet Jackson bared her breast on television (if Justin Timberlake’s boob grab wasn’t rehearsed in advance, why was Miss Jackson wearing a nipple shield at all?), she’s in the midst of another wardrobe malfunction issue this week. Or at least that’s how vegetarian Pamela Anderson sees it.

The former Baywatch babe, who is an active member of the animal protection organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has slammed Jackson for backtracking on animal rights issues and calls her “desperate” for accepting the contract.
“It’s disappointing. She has spoken out against fur before. I don’t know why some people stop listening to their heart. I guess some people get greedy, but it’s sad,” she reportedly told Out magazine.

All in all, then, it’s been a good year for scandal in fashion. And it’s only just August!

HIGH STREET HEROINE

Sonam Kapoor wears Christian Dior, Salvatore Ferragamo and Chanel in ‘Aisha’, which is in theatres now, but she steers clear of choosing a favourite label in real life. Currently the face of four brands, she says she must believe in a brand before she can endorse it...

She may be starring in one of Bollywood’s most fashion-heavy films of all time, but “it girl” Sonam Kapoor manages to walk free of the style baggage other stars carry along with them.

She’s young and thin enough to experiment with her wardrobe, and she’s managed to make that experimentation her style signature. In the three years she’s been in the limelight, Sonam has carved out a niche for herself – quite the opposite of fellow L’Oréal model Aishwarya Rai, who can’t seem to steer clear of fashion disasters.

“Oh, I don’t know about the style icon image. I’ve always loved clothes,” she told Deccan Herald earlier this week. “The style icon tag is a little embarrassing, actually. It’s really just an expression of your individuality. I feel everyone must take that extra effort to look good as it only improves one’s confidence.”

Currently the face of four brands, including Montblanc, L’Oréal, Spice mobiles and Anant jewellery, she says she must believe in a brand before she can endorse it. “I have an annoying idealistic streak and am a very bad liar, which is why I only lend my face to companies that I can relate to.”

So what defines her style, then? “I’m an individualist,” she says. “I enjoy everything, I’m not fixated on a particular designer.”

And although she wears Christian Dior, Salvatore Ferragamo and Chanel in Aisha, which is in cinemas now, she steers clear of choosing a favourite label in real life. “It’s not just about designer gear, it could be a dress from Topshop. It’s like I don’t have a favourite co-star. Variety is the spice of life,” she says.

Twenty-six-year-old Sonam has particularly expressed an interest in vintage clothes before and collects vintage clothing the way people collect art, and she even has a few museum pieces in her wardrobe. “I would like to emphasise that every penny invested in my collection is my own; my parents support my venture but don’t provide me the finances for it,” she declares. “I’m not sure where all this will lead to. If nothing else, it’s a great collection of family heirlooms.”

In discussing why vintage clothes appeal to her, she says it’s their depth and history that she likes. “With vintage clothes, it’s like you can peel away different layers, and each exposes a different dimension. I like that, I like history, I like old things,” she says.

But Sonam’s story is more than one of fine clothes prettily worn – whether old or new. At the heart of her wardrobe decisions is a fat-to-fit saga that truly makes her the quintessential icon of our times.

Working as assistant director to Sanjay Leela Bhansali on the 2005 film Black, she lost an astonishing 35 kilos to make her debut in Sawariya – under her mother’s strict supervision.

Now a 5ft 9-tall clotheshorse, she says there’s no short cut to losing that teenage blubber: hard work, a restricted but healthy diet and a rigorous exercise routine worked for her.

Get her to list her style icons and you know why she needed to shed the fat – especially if she had any hope of emulating them.

“Audrey Hepburn, who made Givenchy Givenchy. Marilyn Monroe for her combination of sexuality and elegance. Jackie Kennedy, Kate Moss, Princess Rania, Maharani Gayatri Devi.” Each of them, she said in a recent interview, has or had their own distinct look, they knew what they wanted very clearly.

And while the wardrobe choices of each of those names are now considered classics, Sonam points out that what they wore at the time was daring and cutting edge. “Audrey Hepburn’s pants in Funny Face, for example, or Monroe’s kitten heels or Madonna’s bustier. These women defined the look and turned those pieces into classics. That’s why they’re icons.”

Clearly, this is a girl who knows her fashion, so it’s not surprising that she has been reported as considering branching out into fashion design. Right now, she says, she’s too busy working to even think about a parallel career, but it’s certainly something on the agenda. “My mum used to be a jewellery designer, doing only couture pieces, for the longest time. If I can do something my dad does, it’s not that much of a surprise if I follow my mum’s career footsteps. So yes, it’ll happen as soon as I can find the time!”

U Cicely