Does it really make sense to pick on Loro Piana for Putin's parka?

One of the most recent controversies regarding the war in Ukraine that the media has fueled in recent days was the one about the Loro Piana parka worn by Putin during a rally at the Olympic Stadium in Moscow. According to various sources, the parka may have been purchased as far back as 2013 even though Pier Luigi Loro Piana, in speaking to the press rightly said «we don't know when the purchase dates back to». Anyway, the brand had to face the classic shitstorm from social media "activists" who filled the comments section of the Instagram profile, blaming by association Loro Piana in a completely arbitrary way. Needless to say, Pier Luigi Loro Piana, who we mentioned above, distanced himself from Putin by emphasizing in his message the real reason to be indignant: «We are absolutely against this war and certainly it was not appropriate for the Russian president to appear in public wearing a high-end garment while the Russian people are also in economic difficulties due to sanctions. [...] We found ourselves in front of an advertisement that was certainly not pleasant while in reality we are helping the Ukrainian people». The statement is very fair - but it is surprising that the dynamics of social media discourse have become so removed from reality that a brand has to apologize or justify itself just because an autocrat, years ago, bought one of its products. Loro Piana simply has no responsibility in this matter, it can't have any, it's a company that sells clothes - and so not only it shouldn't need to emphasize its disassociation from from Putin, which in itself is a given and obvious thing to do, but neither should it see its social channels clogged with completely useless grievances. 

It is not the first time, during this war, that a luxury brand peeps out wearing the exponents of the wrong side of the conflict: at the end of February Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic as well as war criminal responsible for deaths and tortures, made a speech wearing a pair of Monolith boots by Prada. Also recently, while the various European states were freezing the assets of Russian oligarchs in the West, the media brought their attention to the milieu of ultra-rich, multi-millionaire scions and heiresses on perpetual vacation orbiting the Russian government. The public is surprised that these politicians and ultra-rich, despite their apparent distance from the philosophy of life of the capitalist West, buy luxury goods. And they are also surprised when certain figures who represent controversial and even retrograde or wrong political values wear brands that, at home, are associated with democratic and progressive values. 

But the fact is that all the oligarchs and tyrants in history have bought luxury goods - just think of the 1060 pairs of shoes of any conceivable fashion brand owned by Imelda Marcos, wife of the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos; or Teodorin Obiang, son of the president of Equatorial Guinea who, according to Reuters, in 2004 spent $80,000 at Gucci and another $50,000 at Dolce & Gabbana in a single day when he was in the USA. These expenses are actually judged worse when they concern fashion brands, but understandable when it comes to other luxury goods: no one is outraged by Gaddafi's Rolexes or Saddam Hussein's Patek Philippe, just as no one is outraged when luxury sports cars of the world's most famous brands are seized from the mob. The fact is that it's unthinkable that any luxury brand, fashionable or not, should be held responsible for its customers, their moral character or their criminal record. After all, the same liberal values that the West represents allow any consumer in a free market to shop according to his or her means - Russian autocrats included. And the same newspapers that have raised an ambiguous fuss about Loro Piana have also lamented the loss of the millions of euros from top Russian spenders who come to vacation in Italy booking luxury suites and shopping in Via del Corso, the Milan Fashion District or Porto Cervo.

And while it's right that fashion designers are increasingly politicized, it's also true that politicizing their own work is the right of designers - who can also choose not to exercise it. Just as the sins of the fathers do not fall on the sons, the sins of the clients do not fall on the brands. The whole affair, in short, leads one to reflect on how we have arrived at a cultural situation where multinational companies selling high-end clothing are obliged or feel obliged to express their political affiliations - and this is not to say that brands shouldn't be involved in activism or charity, all laudable causes, but that the cultural climate that forces them to hurry up and take a stand on certain issues should perhaps change and leave behind useless political pressurings. After all, what fashion brand today would ever claim to support Putin? What else could brands do but disassociate themselves from a dictator in the same way that an ordinary citizen would declare to be generally against crime? What exactly does the public expect? Making fashion a more inherently moral industry is, by its very definition, a good thing, and yet investing brands with a political importance they do not possess is not the way to make the luxury industry a better place. Fashion, let's remember, is about selling clothes. Just as Vladimir Putin could walk into a boutique and buy everything he sees, so can anyone else who can afford it - the job of brands is to entice and serve customers, not to judge them "morally worthy" of wearing their products.