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Sustainable Fashion Is Colonial—And Silent About Palestine
In the summer of 2014, I launched a silk scarf depicting Gaza in total darkness, lit only by explosions visible from the International Space Station. The image had been tweeted by a German astronaut who called it “the saddest picture I’ve taken from space.” That sentiment—rare for astronauts who typically speak of the awe-inspiring overview effect—was profound. I responded immediately, printing the photo on high-quality silk reminiscent of Hermès, launching a collection that funded dignity kits for displaced Palestinian women.
Later that year, I volunteered in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, providing skill training in fashion and beauty. I documented this experience in The Cut, following a widely circulated essay I had written linking colonialism and the unspoken hierarchies embedded in sustainable fashion.
By fall 2018, I was organizing one of the largest sustainable fashion events at the United Nations. For the first time in fashion history, Palestinian and Lebanese craftsmanship shared the stage with Indigenous experts from the Global South.
This was just after my inaugural Study Hall conference, powered by the MIT Media Lab—an event Vanity Fair would later ask, “Is this what the future of fashion week looks like?” At the time, I was unaware of my growing influence. My boundaries were porous; I allowed many into my orbit—some eager to capitalize on my platform for their own careers as “eco-influencers.”
In the summer of 2020, I launched Sustainable Literacy through Slow Factory, which evolved into Open Edu. My course on sustainable fashion best practices crashed the Zoom app on day one with over 10,000 attendees. Among them were nearly every eco-influencer now making careers out of work I pioneered—many of whom later published books or delivered talks that repackaged my ideas without credit. Executives from major fashion conglomerates—H&M, Kering, LVMH, adidas, Nike, Gap, Gucci, Chanel—attended my classes and engaged in direct conversations about systemic change.
By winter 2023, one such global brand, with whom Slow Factory had a five-year waste-reduction agreement, threatened to pull funding unless I stopped speaking publicly about Palestine. I refused. Legal negotiations followed. I cannot name the company, but I can say this: the sustainable fashion industry, supported by Zionist PR firms, was quick to ostracize me from the very field I had helped shape.
My former students, now celebrated authors and keynote speakers, collected awards in designer gowns while I was blacklisted. Hundreds of PhD students reached out to include my work in their theses—while the industry attempted to erase my presence entirely.
In fall 2024, my book A Woman is a School sold 5,000 copies within weeks. Not a single fashion outlet covered it, despite the fact that their editors regularly consume my content—from Instagram Stories to newsletters to private industry seminars. The colonial dynamics of erasure, exclusion, and appropriation remain deeply entrenched in fashion. DEI initiatives continue to leave out Palestine and Lebanon. Ask yourself: who gets platformed? Who gets invited to speak? Where are the Arab women—intellectuals like myself—who have shaped this industry, only to watch our work be diluted and regurgitated by “cute girls” with nothing to say but plenty to wear?
Meanwhile, women in the Global South suffer and die under systems of oppression—including genocide—while the industry claps for parrots in designer outfits. Those of us who dare to name these truths are erased.
But something changed in me. I stopped seeing myself as a victim of these systems. I realized I am a media platform. I have always been. I have shaped culture, media, and fashion. I no longer comply with colonial structures of censorship and erasure.
That’s why I started my column A Woman is a School, where I’ll regularly share what traditional institutions won’t teach you—starting with this story. Below, you’ll find a list of articles I’ve written that have shaped the way sustainable fashion is discussed today. But this is not just about credit. This is a call to action. It’s time to name the elephant in the room: colonialism—and the women of color who enable it by participating in the erasure of those of us who refuse to be silent about Palestine.
Links to my articles.
{
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"title" : "Sustainable Fashion Is Colonial—And Silent About Palestine",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/sustainable-fashion-is-colonial-and-silent-about-palestine",
"date" : "2025-05-22 10:19:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Celine_Portrait_2025.jpg",
"excerpt" : "In the summer of 2014, I launched a silk scarf depicting Gaza in total darkness, lit only by explosions visible from the International Space Station. The image had been tweeted by a German astronaut who called it “the saddest picture I’ve taken from space.” That sentiment—rare for astronauts who typically speak of the awe-inspiring overview effect—was profound. I responded immediately, printing the photo on high-quality silk reminiscent of Hermès, launching a collection that funded dignity kits for displaced Palestinian women.",
"content" : "In the summer of 2014, I launched a silk scarf depicting Gaza in total darkness, lit only by explosions visible from the International Space Station. The image had been tweeted by a German astronaut who called it “the saddest picture I’ve taken from space.” That sentiment—rare for astronauts who typically speak of the awe-inspiring overview effect—was profound. I responded immediately, printing the photo on high-quality silk reminiscent of Hermès, launching a collection that funded dignity kits for displaced Palestinian women.Later that year, I volunteered in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, providing skill training in fashion and beauty. I documented this experience in The Cut, following a widely circulated essay I had written linking colonialism and the unspoken hierarchies embedded in sustainable fashion.By fall 2018, I was organizing one of the largest sustainable fashion events at the United Nations. For the first time in fashion history, Palestinian and Lebanese craftsmanship shared the stage with Indigenous experts from the Global South. This was just after my inaugural Study Hall conference, powered by the MIT Media Lab—an event Vanity Fair would later ask, “Is this what the future of fashion week looks like?” At the time, I was unaware of my growing influence. My boundaries were porous; I allowed many into my orbit—some eager to capitalize on my platform for their own careers as “eco-influencers.”In the summer of 2020, I launched Sustainable Literacy through Slow Factory, which evolved into Open Edu. My course on sustainable fashion best practices crashed the Zoom app on day one with over 10,000 attendees. Among them were nearly every eco-influencer now making careers out of work I pioneered—many of whom later published books or delivered talks that repackaged my ideas without credit. Executives from major fashion conglomerates—H&M, Kering, LVMH, adidas, Nike, Gap, Gucci, Chanel—attended my classes and engaged in direct conversations about systemic change.By winter 2023, one such global brand, with whom Slow Factory had a five-year waste-reduction agreement, threatened to pull funding unless I stopped speaking publicly about Palestine. I refused. Legal negotiations followed. I cannot name the company, but I can say this: the sustainable fashion industry, supported by Zionist PR firms, was quick to ostracize me from the very field I had helped shape.My former students, now celebrated authors and keynote speakers, collected awards in designer gowns while I was blacklisted. Hundreds of PhD students reached out to include my work in their theses—while the industry attempted to erase my presence entirely.In fall 2024, my book A Woman is a School sold 5,000 copies within weeks. Not a single fashion outlet covered it, despite the fact that their editors regularly consume my content—from Instagram Stories to newsletters to private industry seminars. The colonial dynamics of erasure, exclusion, and appropriation remain deeply entrenched in fashion. DEI initiatives continue to leave out Palestine and Lebanon. Ask yourself: who gets platformed? Who gets invited to speak? Where are the Arab women—intellectuals like myself—who have shaped this industry, only to watch our work be diluted and regurgitated by “cute girls” with nothing to say but plenty to wear?Meanwhile, women in the Global South suffer and die under systems of oppression—including genocide—while the industry claps for parrots in designer outfits. Those of us who dare to name these truths are erased.But something changed in me. I stopped seeing myself as a victim of these systems. I realized I am a media platform. I have always been. I have shaped culture, media, and fashion. I no longer comply with colonial structures of censorship and erasure.That’s why I started my column A Woman is a School, where I’ll regularly share what traditional institutions won’t teach you—starting with this story. Below, you’ll find a list of articles I’ve written that have shaped the way sustainable fashion is discussed today. But this is not just about credit. This is a call to action. It’s time to name the elephant in the room: colonialism—and the women of color who enable it by participating in the erasure of those of us who refuse to be silent about Palestine.Links to my articles."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Skims, Shapewear, and the Shape of Power: When a Brand Expands Into Occupied Territory",
"author" : "Louis Pisano",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/skims-shapewear-and-the-shape-of-power",
"date" : "2025-11-17 07:13:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Skims_Israel.jpg",
"excerpt" : "On the evening of November 11, Kris Jenner celebrated her 70th birthday inside the fortified sprawl of Jeff Bezos’s $175 million Beverly Hills compound, hidden behind hedges so tall they violate city regulations, a rule he bypasses with a monthly $1,000 fine that functions more like a subscription fee than a penalty. The theme was James Bond, black tie and martini glasses, a winking acknowledgment of Amazon’s new ownership of the 007 franchise. Guests surrendered their phones upon arrival, a formality as unremarkable as valet check-in. Whatever managed to slip beyond the gates came in stray fragments: a long-lens photograph of Oprah Winfrey stepping out of a black SUV, Mariah Carey caught mid-laugh on the curb, Kylie Jenner offering a middle finger through the window of a chauffeured car. The rest appeared hours later in the form of carefully curated photos released by an official photographer, images softened and perfected until they resembled an ad campaign more than documentation. Nothing inside was witnessed on anyone’s own terms.",
"content" : "On the evening of November 11, Kris Jenner celebrated her 70th birthday inside the fortified sprawl of Jeff Bezos’s $175 million Beverly Hills compound, hidden behind hedges so tall they violate city regulations, a rule he bypasses with a monthly $1,000 fine that functions more like a subscription fee than a penalty. The theme was James Bond, black tie and martini glasses, a winking acknowledgment of Amazon’s new ownership of the 007 franchise. Guests surrendered their phones upon arrival, a formality as unremarkable as valet check-in. Whatever managed to slip beyond the gates came in stray fragments: a long-lens photograph of Oprah Winfrey stepping out of a black SUV, Mariah Carey caught mid-laugh on the curb, Kylie Jenner offering a middle finger through the window of a chauffeured car. The rest appeared hours later in the form of carefully curated photos released by an official photographer, images softened and perfected until they resembled an ad campaign more than documentation. Nothing inside was witnessed on anyone’s own terms.The guest list felt less like a party roster and more like an index of contemporary American power. Tyler Perry arrived early, Snoop Dogg later in the evening, Paris Hilton shimmering in a silver column that clung like liquid metal. Hailey Bieber drifted past in a slinky black dress, while Prince Harry and Meghan Sussex appeared in images that were quietly scrubbed from the family grid a day later. Nine billionaires circulated among the luminaries, their combined wealth brushing toward $600 billion. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan joined Bill Gates at the poker table, while Bezos himself wandered through the party with Lauren Sánchez, doing the kind of effortless hosting that comes with having $245B in the bank.Jenner, dressed in red vintage Givenchy by Alexander McQueen, floated from conversation to conversation. She paused for a warm embrace with Perry, raised a glass with Hilton, and eventually made her way to the dance floor with Justin Bieber. At 70, she remains the family’s central command center, equal parts mother, manager, strategist, and brand steward. The celebration functioned as a kind of coronation, a reaffirmation that the Kardashian-Jenner empire is not stagnating but expanding, stretching itself into new sectors and new narratives with the same relentless ease that has defined its last decade.Just two weeks earlier, on a bright Monday in late October, a very different scene unfolded at the SKIMS flagship on the Sunset Strip. That morning, the boutique had been cleared to host Hagiborim, the Israeli nonprofit that supports children of fallen IDF soldiers and orphans of the October 7 attacks. Around a dozen girls wandered the store, laughing among themselves, perusing tank tops, and snapping selfies before assembling outside with those unmistakable beige SKIMS shopping bags. The images of the visit were sparse and easily missed unless one went searching; they appeared only on Hagiborim’s Instagram highlights. The event took place on October 28, less than a week before news began to circulate about SKIMS’s upcoming entry into the Israeli market.The launch itself unfolded with clinical precision. On November 10th in partnership with Irani Corp, SKIMS went live on Factory 54’s Israeli website, with in-store boutiques planned for December and ten to fifteen standalone stores projected to open across Israel by 2026. The company’s official language remained on brand, warm and relentlessly forward-looking. It spoke of “inclusivity,” of “community presence,” of broadening the global market. Nowhere did it acknowledge the war in Gaza, though the border sits just over an hour away and the headlines that week were filled with rising casualty counts and allegations of cease-fire violations, an entirely different reality unfolding parallel to the brand’s expansion.Hours after the SKIMS launch, Kardashian’s Instagram shifted into overdrive. She posted a carousel of herself in a gray bikini, captioned with a single emoji racking up millions of likes. The images came just two days after news of her fourth unsuccessful attempt at the California Bar had broken, a reminder that in the Kardashian ecosystem, social media momentum often outweighs any setback.Beneath the SKIMS machine which just raised $225M in funding is a quieter network of capital. Joshua Kushner, Jared’s younger brother, the polished, soft-spoken investor whose firm helped seed Instagram, owns a 10 percent stake and a board seat in SKIMS, a detail that surfaces only in required filings and the occasional business-page profile. The Kushner family’s ties to Israel run far deeper than the brand’s marketing conveys: long-standing real-estate ventures in Tel Aviv, and a family foundation that has funneled at least $342,000 to Friends of the IDF and another $58,500 to West Bank settlement groups and yeshivas in places like Beit El and Efrat. Jared Kushner’s diplomatic work on the Abraham Accords carved geopolitical corridors that SKIMS now moves through. The brand may position itself as apolitical, but the infrastructure of its Israel expansion is built on deeply political ground.Fashion media, however, showed little interest in any of this. A wide sweep through the archives of Business of Fashion, WWD, and Vogue Business yields nothing, not a single headline, not even a line buried in a retail digest. The launch through Factory 54, the long-term plan for as many as fifteen stores, the philanthropic event with Hagiborim, all of it passed in silence in the sector that usually treats Kardashian business moves as reliable traffic drivers.Instead, their coverage was devoted wholly to Kris Jenner’s birthday. Harper’s Bazaar published three separate pieces. W Magazine dubbed it “the Kardashians’ own Met Gala.” Vogue broke down the night with a dutifully detailed recap that leaned heavily on Harry and Meghan’s brief presence, clearly recognizing their value as SEO gold.The Kardashians operate with a level of intentionality that has outpaced many political campaigns. They understand the choreography of public-facing narratives better than any other family in American media. The Hagiborim visit, girls only, modest branding, no Kim in sight, served as a small preemptive gesture, a way to soften potential critique before the Israel launch rolled out. While the party dominated the feed, the expansion passed unnoticed and the charity event remained strictly confined to the margins, a calculated sequence, not chaos, the kind of PR mastery we’ve come to expect from Kris Jenner.The same instinct shapes their political signaling. On Inauguration Day 2025, as Donald Trump took the oath of office for a second term, Kim posted a silent Instagram Story of Melania Trump stepping out in a navy ensemble and wide-brimmed hat. She offered no caption, no endorsement, no framing. The image disappeared within 24 hours, but not before sparking a brief firestorm. It is the same familiar pattern, presence without explanation, the kind of ambiguity that allows the public to fill in the blanks while the family remains insulated.Beyond their insulated world, the conflict continues. Inside the bubble, the champagne is crisp, the Hulu cameras are rolling and the narrative is intact. What remains for the public is the split-screen: Kris Jenner blowing out seventy candles beneath a ceiling of crystals, surrounded by some of the wealthiest people alive; and Kim Kardashian posing in a studded bikini, eyes locked on the lens, hinting at the next product drop. Between the two lies a series of transactions, commercial, political, and moral, that the audience is never invited to examine.As for Kris Jenner’s birthday, it will be remembered. The launch will fade. The girls who posed with their new SKIMS pajamas will grow older; the war will either end or shift into some new phase. And the Kardashian-Jenner machine will keep moving, calculating every image, every post, every angle, ensuring the story that matters most is always the one they control."
}
,
{
"title" : "Unpublished, Erased, Unarchived: Why Arab-Led Publishing Matters More Than Ever",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/unpublished-erased-unarchived",
"date" : "2025-11-13 10:25:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Unpublished.jpg",
"excerpt" : "At a moment when news of Gaza, West Bank, South Lebanon, and Beirut are slowly disappearing from the headlines—and from public consciousness—Arab writers face a singular burden: We must write the stories that no one else will print. We live in a media landscape that refuses to see us as fully human. A recent analysis from Giving Compass suggests that traditional media skews Palestinian news: seven major U.S. news outlets found that Palestinian stories were 13.6% to 38.9% less likely to be individualized than Israeli ones. Meaning, Palestinians appear as abstractions—statistics, masses, “civilians”—not as people with names, losses, or lives. Meanwhile, reports from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) show that UK outlets had a fourfold increase in coverage only when Gaza was framed through the lens of “criticism of Israel,” not Palestinian experience itself.",
"content" : "At a moment when news of Gaza, West Bank, South Lebanon, and Beirut are slowly disappearing from the headlines—and from public consciousness—Arab writers face a singular burden: We must write the stories that no one else will print. We live in a media landscape that refuses to see us as fully human. A recent analysis from Giving Compass suggests that traditional media skews Palestinian news: seven major U.S. news outlets found that Palestinian stories were 13.6% to 38.9% less likely to be individualized than Israeli ones. Meaning, Palestinians appear as abstractions—statistics, masses, “civilians”—not as people with names, losses, or lives. Meanwhile, reports from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) show that UK outlets had a fourfold increase in coverage only when Gaza was framed through the lens of “criticism of Israel,” not Palestinian experience itself.Against this backdrop of erasure, the scarcity of Arab women’s voices in publishing is even more alarming. A bibliometric study spanning 1.7 million publications across the Middle East and North Africa shows that men publish 11% to 51% more than women. What’s more, women’s authorship is less persistent, and men reach senior authorship far faster. Arab women are not only under-published but also systematically written out of the global record.This is why Slow Factory has founded Books for Collective Liberation, an Arab-led, independent imprint committed to telling Arab stories the way they should be told: authentically, empathetically, and wholly. We publish work that would never survive the filters of legacy publishing: the political hesitation, the “market concerns,” the fear of touching Arab grief, joy, or its future. Independence is not an aesthetic choice; it is the only way to protect our stories from being softened, sanitized, or structurally erased.Our forthcoming title, On the Zero Line, created in partnership with Isolarii, is a testament to that mission. It stands on the knife’s edge where memory is threatened with extinction—a book that documents what official archives will not. It is a testimony that refuses to disappear.But books alone are not enough. Stories need a home that is alive, responsive, and politically unafraid. That is the work of Everything is Political (EIP), our independent media platform and growing archive of essays, investigations, and first-person journalism. In an era where Big Tech throttles dissenting voices and newsrooms avoid political risk, EIP protects the creative freedom of Arab writers and journalists. We publish what mainstream outlets won’t—because our lives, our histories, and our communities, dead or alive, should not depend on editorial courage elsewhere.Together, Books for Collective Liberation and Everything is Political form an ecosystem of resistance: literature and journalism that feed each other, strengthening each other, building memory as infrastructure—a new archive. We refuse the fragmentation imposed on us: that books are separate from news, that culture is separate from politics, that our narratives exist only within Western frameworks. This archive is not static; it is a living, breathing record of a people determined to write themselves into the future.When stories from Gaza, Beirut, and the broader Levant fail to make the news—or make it only as geopolitical abstractions—the result breeds distortion and public consent to eliminate us. It is a wound to historical truth. It erases whole worlds. We will not let that happen.Independent, Arab-led publishing is how we repair that wound. It is how we record what happened, in our own voice. It is how we ensure that no empire, no newsroom, and no algorithm gets to decide which of our stories survive.Tonight, we gather at Palestine House to celebrate the launch of On the Zero Line, a collection of stories, essays, and poems from Gaza, translated in English for the first time. This evening, we are centering the lived experiences of Palestinians from Gaza who have been displaced in London. I have the honor of interviewing journalist Yara Eid and Ahmed Alnaouq, project manager of the platform “We are not Just Numbers.” Here, we will discuss how mainstream literature and journalism have censored us—and how we can keep our stories alive in response."
}
,
{
"title" : "The British Museum Gala and the Deep Echoes of Colonialism",
"author" : "Ana Beatriz Reitz do Valle Gameiro",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-british-museum-gala-and-the-deep-echoes-of-colonialism",
"date" : "2025-11-11 11:59:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/the-younger-memnon-statue-british-museum%20copy.jpg",
"excerpt" : "When it comes to fashion, few things are as overblown, overanalyzed, and utterly irresistible as a gala. For instance: hear the name “Met Gala”, and any fashionista’s spine will tingle while every publicist in New York breaks into a cold sweat. While New York has been hosting the original event at the Metropolitan Museum since 1948 and Paris had its Louvre moment in 2024, London finally decided to answer with an event at the British Museum on 18 October this year.",
"content" : "When it comes to fashion, few things are as overblown, overanalyzed, and utterly irresistible as a gala. For instance: hear the name “Met Gala”, and any fashionista’s spine will tingle while every publicist in New York breaks into a cold sweat. While New York has been hosting the original event at the Metropolitan Museum since 1948 and Paris had its Louvre moment in 2024, London finally decided to answer with an event at the British Museum on 18 October this year.The invitation-only event drew high-profile guests such as Naomi Campbell, Mick Jagger, Edward Enninful, Janet Jackson, Alexa Chung, and James Norton. With a theme of ‘Pink Ball,’ the night drew inspiration from the vibrant colors of India and walked hand-in-hand with the museum’s ‘Ancient India: Living Traditions’ exhibition, adding a touch of colonial irony à la British tradition.Unlike its always-talked-about New York counterpart, or Paris’s star-studded affair last year that reunited figures like Doechii, Tyra Banks, Gigi Hadid, and Victoria Beckham, London’s event felt less memorable fashion-wise. With little buzz surrounding it - whether due to a less star-studded guest list, unremarkable fashion, or its clash with the Academy Museum Gala - it ultimately felt more like an ordinary night than a headline-making affair.But the event was not entirely irrelevant. In fact, it prompted reflections rarely discussed in mainstream media. Notably, because in spite of the museum’s sprawling collection of objects from other marginalized countries, the event ‘‘celebrated’’ Indian artifacts looted during colonial rule. Equally noteworthy is the institution’s partnership with BP - the British oil giant whose exports reach Israel, a state that, in the twenty-first century, stands as a symbol of colonialism and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. And, of course, every penny raised went to the museum’s international initiatives, including an excavation project in Benin City, Nigeria, and other archaeological digs in Iraq.Although excavation is often portrayed as a means of preserving the past, archaeologists acknowledge that it is inherently destructive - albeit justifiable if it provides people with a deeper understanding of the human past. As Geoffrey Scarre discusses in Ethics of Digging, a chapter in Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice, it matters who has the authority to decide what is removed from the ground, how it is treated, whether it should be retained or reburied, and who ultimately controls it. Something that feels especially relevant when discussing the objects of marginalized communities and the legacies of countries shaped by European colonialism, now just laid bare as trophies to embellish the gilded halls of Euro-American institutions.That the British Museum’s collections were built on the wealth of its nation imperialism is hardly news. Yet the institution, like so many others, from the Louvre to the Met, continues to thrive on those very foundations. As Robert J. C. Young observes in Postcolonial Remains, “the desire to pronounce postcolonial theory dead on both sides of the Atlantic suggests that its presence continues to disturb and provoke anxiety: the real problem lies in the fact that the postcolonial remains.”Although postcolonialism is often mistakenly associated with the period after a country gained independence from colonial rule, academics like Young, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Frantz Fanon acknowledge that our world is still a postcolonial one, with cultural, political, and economic issues reflecting the lasting effects of colonization. Its aftermath extends beyond labels like “Third World” or the lingering sense of superiority that still marks the Global North; it also fuels a persistent entitlement to our art, culture, and legacy.This entitlement can be seen in the halls of many museums worldwide. And though looting may not always be illegal - as in how these institutions acquire those objects - it is certainly unethical. For decades, scholars and activists have debated that these institutions should restitute the legacies taken from other lands, objects stolen through wars of aggression and exploitation. Still, these museums deliberately choose to hold them, artifacts that bear little cultural resonance for their current keepers, but profound meaning for the people from whom they were taken.But these debates are no longer confined to academic circles. Take Egypt, for instance. Its long-awaited Grand Museum finally opened its doors three decades after its initial proposal in 1992 and nearly twenty years since construction began in 2005. Now fully operational, breathing fresh life into Egypt’s storied past through showcasing Tutankhamun’s tomb among other relics of the country, it is demanding the return of its legacy. Egypt’s former and famously outspoken Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, for instance, recently told the BBC: “Now I want two things, number one, museums to stop buying stolen artefacts, and number two, I need three objects to come back: the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, the Zodiac from the Louvre, and the Bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.” Beyond the direct call-out, Dr. Hawass has initiated online petitions demanding the return of the artifacts, amassing hundreds of thousands of signatures. Nevertheless, the world’s great museums remain silent, and the precious Egyptian treasures are still very much on display.With African, Asian, and Latin American legacies still held captive within Euro-American institutions, the echoes of colonialism linger well into the 21st century, keeping the postcolonial order intact. Even fashion, an industry that loves to believe it exists beyond politics, proves such. Whether through events that claim to celebrate certain things but end up being meaningless, the current Eurocentrism that still dominates the industry, or how many labels still profit from the aesthetics of marginalized nations without acknowledgment, fashion, much like museums, reproduces the very hierarchies postcolonial theory seeks to expose.Ultimately, the British Museum’s latest event does not celebrate Indian culture or Nigerian history through its excavation in Benin City. Like so many Euro-American institutions, it reinforces imperial power - masquerading cultural theft as preservation.In fashion as in museums, spectacle too often conceals empire - and beauty, unexamined, can become complicity."
}
]
}
