Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on February 12, 2015

Goga Ashkenazi, left, with her Vionnet colleague Michle Cimenti. Photo: Alex Majoli

The first female oligarch of fashion.

Goga Ashkenazi has a friend coming through Milan in a day, so she decides to have some people overa small dinner for 12, she figures, though, by the morning of, its turned into a big dinner for 100 with a band and a DJ.

Around 6 p.m., on her way out of the office, her personal assistant, Jos, pokes his head in to tell Goga her drivers downstairs.

How does the house look? she asks.

Okay, I think, Jos says. Actually, gorgeous.

Can you get someone to come do my hair? Goga asks. Extensions are falling out.

Gogas a long-limbed and flirtatious woman of 35 with 32 years of experience in hoping to someday become a dressmaker. During that time, she has witnessed a number of remarkable moments (such as the fall of communism, which happened when she was growing up in the Soviet empire) and scored many accomplishments of her own, including a degree at Oxford and the establishment of an oil-and-gas company in her ancestral homeland of Kazakhstan that earned her a fortune and made her one of the countrys first female oligarchs. She is also famous for her high-end run of male companions, which has included Prince Andrew of Great Britain, Lapo Elkann (the Fiat heir and the closest thing to a reigning Italian prince), and Saif Qaddafi (a son of the late Libyan dictator). Her proudest moments were giving birth to two sons via what she calls her close friendship with Timur Kulibayev, a Kazakh oil billionaire in his own right and, for two decades and counting, the son-in-law of the countrys president. Its complicated, Goga says.

Despite all that, it wasnt until 2012, when she bought the historic fashion house Vionnet and installed herself as the chief designer, that she felt shed begun to find her place in the world. Goga has a very can-do-it attitude, says her friend Gianluca Longo, a stylist in London. She loves clothes, so she buys a famous old company. Its like, if you like spaghetti, you decide to buy Barilla.

My old life wasnt me, Goga says. I kind of had a moment. Almost immediately, I sold my energy company. I realized I wanted creative. To me, fashion is art. Growing up in Moscow, where her father served in Mikhail Gorbachevs Central Committee, Goga lived for clothes. Even though all the girls at her school were required to wear brown jumpers, she persuaded the seamstresses working on the ground floor of her apartment building to perform some custom tailoring. I had navy, green, Bordeaux, she says. They made me macram, lace. I saved every issue of Burda Modenthe German magazine with patterns that they allowed us to get. Then, the Vogues got passed around. Diplomats brought them back.

See more here:

Goga Ashkenazi: The First Female Oligarch of Fashion

Category: Ashkenazi
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