Dictator's Daughter Misses Her Own Fashion Show After Petition, Protests

Change.org readers have successfully shown the fashion industry that forced child labor is a fashion faux pas. Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the President of Uzbekistan and the country's Ambassador to Spain and Permanent Representative to the UN office in Geneva, was scheduled to present her fashion line, GULI, at New York Fashion Week on September 15th. When the organizers learned of her connection to human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, they canceled her show. Karimova quickly went on the search for a new venue and Change.org readers jumped to action.

The International Labor Rights Forum started a petition on Change.org calling on Cipriani, a restaurant that Karimova was allegedly approaching, not to host her show. Uzbekistan is infamous for its state-sponsored policy of removing up to two million children from schools across the country and forcing them to pick cotton to meet government-imposed production quotas. Within days, 500 people had contacted Cipriani through Change.org and many concerned individuals flooded the New York City based restaurant with phone calls. The petition immediately generated pressure and negative media attention toward to Cipriani. The effort was even highlighted in the New York Post and on NYC's NPR affiliate.

The day before Karimova's fashion show was scheduled to occur, invitees confirmed that her clothing brand did intend to hold its fashion show at Cipriani on September 15th. However, due to the increasing controversy surround Karimova, the New York Post reported that the dictator's daughter was apparently nowhere to be seen in New York even as her show rapidly approached. According to reports, the production of the show was "marred by chaos from the start" due to Gulnara's absence and that the producers "had trouble luring VIPs to attend the show for the past month amid reports that Uzbekistan’s dictatorship." (It's interesting to note that Karimova has several high profile celebrity friends including Sting.)

What's more, due to all the negative publicity, the designer herself did not even show up for her own show at Cipriani. While Karimova did not make it, scores of protesters rallied outsider Cipriani to call for an end to forced child labor in cotton and successfully focused media attention on the human rights situation in Uzbekistan. The petition on Change.org clearly frightened Karimova away from her own fashion show and sent a message that designers with deplorable labor and human rights records cannot hide their abuses behind a fashionable facade and expect to come away unscathed.

While the focus around Karimova throughout New York Fashion Week shed a spotlight on the ongoing issue of forced child labor in Uzbekistan, the abuses in the cotton fields continue even right now in the current harvest. Apparel brands must do more to ensure that the clothing we buy is not made using cotton picked by forced child labor. You can find out how to push some brands lagging behind the rest of the industry on this issue to do more here. You can also ask Karimova's friend, Sting, to donate millions of dollars he received for performing for the brutal regime in Uzbekistan to human rights organizations here.

Photo credit: Judy Skartvedt (with permission)