Fashion Twitter is mad Daniel Roseberry Dressed a MAGA heiress.
a historical ledger of some very bad people with very good clothes paid for with very bad money.
Happy Tuesday everyone. I wasn’t planning to send another newsletter until tomorrow, but the internet has a way of rearranging one’s editorial calendar. It involves Le Bal des Débutantes…..again. Yesterday, the account @chaoswintour tweeted two images that are currently going viral on Twitter/X: one of Reagan Sacks, daughter of David Sacks, Trump’s newly installed White House “AI and Crypto Czar” and longtime Palantir investor, posing at Le Bal in a pink Schiaparelli haute couture gown; and, beside her, a fresh New York Times investigation detailing her father’s alleged influence-peddling on behalf of his Silicon Valley allies.
The caption did not hold back at all: “Hate to see Schiaparelli dress her. The tiara is atrocious royal cosplay. Eat the rich plz.” Commenters recoiled, scandalized that a storied maison and their favourite fashion daddy, Daniel Roseberry, would dress the daughter of a Trump official, as if couture were ever the province of moral clarity. BTW when you get a chance research his upbringing and his father. Anyways, the more grounded reaction, the one I tend to share, is that this is simply the system working as designed. Couture is not a meritocracy; it is a closed economy built on inherited wealth, discreet conservatism, and the polite fictions of taste. The boardrooms are conservative, the clientele even more so, and the fantasy that designers will take principled public stands is a uniquely online wish, not a reflection of how the industry survives.
Still, the uproar, and the recent accusations that Filipino politician Chiz Escudero bankrolled his wife influencer and front row staple, Heart Evangelista’s couture habits with misappropriated public funds—sent me back to a long, uncomfortable truth about fashion’s most coveted clients: many arrive at the atelier by paths that wind through the darker corners of global power. And when many of these women could no longer travel freely to Europe due to sanctions, protests, or security risks, designers and their teams often arranged private trips to deliver fittings and garments directly to the palace or residence, maintaining the flow of couture amid the unrest. These visits, documented in memoirs, interviews, leaked emails, and archival records, highlight the uninterrupted commerce between ateliers and authoritarian elites.
Tehran, 1970’s
As anti-Shah protests escalated and martial law was imposed in September 1978, Empress Farah Pahlavi continued to commission haute couture from Paris until the very end of the regime. Marc Bohan, creative director of Christian Dior from 1961 to 1989, personally oversaw fittings and deliveries for the Empress into December 1978 — three weeks before the Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, working from sketches and measurements dispatched from Tehran, as preserved in the Dior archives and echoed in fashion retrospectives on Bohan’s tenure.
Yves Saint Laurent, who had designed Farah’s wedding gown in 1959 while still at Dior, also maintained an active client relationship with her throughout the 1970s; the Empress herself recounts ongoing commissions from Saint Laurent in her 2004 memoir An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah.
Valentino Garavani was another of her regular couturiers during this period and continued to dress her until the regime’s collapse, as both he and Giancarlo Giammetti have repeatedly confirmed in interviews over the decades (including in W Magazine 2014 and Italian press 2008–2020).
Damascus, 2011-2012
While the Syrian army’s siege of Homs killed thousands of civilians in early 2012 (UN estimates: 5,000 dead by March 2012) and barrel bombs were used against rebel-held districts, Asma al-Assad, former First Lady of Syria, placed multiple orders for luxury goods from Europe. Leaked emails from the WikiLeaks “Syria Files” collection, published in 2012, include messages sent on 3 February 2012 — during the height of the Homs bombardment — in which Asma al-Assad requested multiple pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes, including the 120 mm Pigalle in nude patent leather and several crystal-embellished styles; her assistant confirmed shipping addresses in Damascus and urged the Paris boutique to dispatch the items “as soon as possible.” Christian Louboutin’s Paris team continued to fulfill private orders for VIP clients at that time, including alleged fulfillment through 3rd parties, before full enforcement of later EU luxury-goods sanctions.
Baku, 2018-2024
Mehriban Aliyeva, First Lady and Vice-President of Azerbaijan, has been a long-standing client of French couturier Stéphane Rolland. Rolland has publicly described making two to three private trips per year to Baku and other regional capitals for fittings with select clients, including Aliyeva, in interviews with Vogue Arabia (March 2018 and November 2021 issues) and other fashion media. These trips continued after the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and into 2023–2024, a period in which Human Rights Watch documented repeated waves of arrests of independent journalists and civil-society figures (notably November 2023–March 2024).
Yemen War, 2015-2020
During the Yemen war—which the United Nations repeatedly called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and which, by the end of 2020, had caused an estimated 233,000 deaths (UNDP/UN OCHA, December 2020)—Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led the military coalition that intervened in the conflict.
Throughout this period, Lebanese couturiers Elie Saab and Zuhair Murad remained two of the most prominent designers dressing members of the Saudi and Emirati royal families and their circles at official events and private occasions. Saab, who opened a flagship atelier in Riyadh in 2017 and has held seasonal trunk shows and private appointments in both Riyadh and Dubai ever since, told Vogue Arabia in March 2018: “The Middle East is my second home. My clients there are loyal for decades, and when they need something special, we make sure it happens—wherever they are.” Zuhair Murad has similarly described the Gulf as the heart of his business, telling Harper’s Bazaar Arabia in April 2019 that “my most important clients are in the region” and that he personally ensures their needs are met for every collection. Neither designer has ever commented publicly on the war, and both continued to deepen their commercial presence in Saudi Arabia and the UAE during and after the conflict—Saab with a second Riyadh boutique at Via Riyadh Mall in 2023, Murad with major installations at Riyadh Season 2024.
No public record confirms that either designer suspended service to these clients or refused commissions linked to the coalition’s leadership. The ateliers simply carried on forming the unseen backbone of couture’s relationship with power.
Fashion’s Faustian bargain endures.
Below is a ledger of many such cases… (this is a very long detailed newsletter today, enjoy!)
