A Cutopian Universe

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Trending Salwa Al Mutairi

This is the last time i'm gona post about her.

Apparently the Ministry of Information Thinks Telling the Truth is Wrong. So They Ban this Film.

I swear to God you Kefala-loving, human-trafficking, profiteers-from-misery when I (Inshallah) graduate, i'm going to do every thing I can to wipe you off the face of this earth! Especially the diabolical millionaire racketeers who run the foreign employment agencies. I hope you choke on your overpriced sushi next time you go to Nobu.

Pink Feuille

I Hate All Kuwait Airport Staff and All My Racist Fellow-Citizens

This is about the delayed flights to Mumbai where 150 passengers had to wait in our beautiful airport for FOUR DAYS:

“Two hours after the flight was cancelled we got restless and some of us started asking questions to the airport authorities. They just kept telling us to ‘shut up and stand quietly,” she said.

everal passengers have now come together and sent complaints to Kuwait Airways as well as Consulate General of Kuwait in Mumbai.

In their letter they have alleged racism. “Americans who were on our flights were accommodated at Sheraton, a five star, while after six hours of wait at the airport, we were accommodated in a three star." WTF????

"During our six-hour wait at the airport, we kept asking for water or something to eat, but in vain. Your duty manager was rude to us."

Read the full article in the Mumbai Mirror.

You know what? I believe every word. The staff in Kuwait airport are overpaid, underworked and severely lacking in the most basic supply of manners.

One commenter on the article stated: "It was my personal experience when i reached the Kuwait airport from mumbai on a Kuwait airways flight. There were no troyles available due to the heavy rush at the airport so we all waited in a line for the troyells. There was aman infront of me with a small child (infant) waiting for his turn and when his trolley arrived an arab lady grabbed it she was not even in the line and he just refused to give it to her since we all were waiting for 20 minutes in the line and she came from nowhere. She made a big noise and was yelling at the airport and soon an officer came to her rescue yelling at the man making a scene, asked him to shut up and caught him by the collar. The officer also asked him(the man) to give away his passport and stand in a corner with his baby girl. the lady was allowed to go away with the mans trolley."

I would have bitten that officer's head off and strangled that women with her handbag.

Ginny As Muse

No Way. She looks soooo gingerfab but I would have loved to see her against a rambling Scottish country scene, screaming in copper-headed anger from the ramparts of a burning castle, vowing revenge and going all "COME you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, UNSEX ME HERE and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of DIREST cruelty!!" I dig the Macbetho-Hogwartian angle. And the cheekbones.

She Loves 7ishma

So I found this blog while webtrolling today. Fee postat mo 9ij like "Modesty Makeover" of scenes from the Tourist (Angeline Jolie's film) and runway inspired niqab fashion. Although I may disagree ideologically with a lot of what she says excepting the critique of 7ijab popcorn, I must say (judgement suspended) that she has some really cool pictures. So here: Monaqa-share time!!

ps. BTW I had no idea that there was such a thing as Kuwaiti hijab!

Probably Not a Hit With the Mu7ajabat

I Will Sue KDD

I was happily eating my Dhahab today... until I discovered that there was no chocolate at the bottom of my cone. What the hell.

There is a culture of self-congratulation that comes with excess wealth and small populations- Fatima Al Qadiri

Another K-fab project by Fatima Al Qadiri, the artist that presented the lecture on Kuwaiti boys' hairstyles that I posted about here. Pate is exactly what we are as a country: a rich, unhealthy melange and exactly what them mohaja-popcornista women slap on their faces. A really cool book on the aesthetic excessivism (somehow excess doesn't do it) that pervades modern Kuwaiti culture. I will surely be pur-chasin' soon. Thanks for the link Tumtum!

images fron Vmag online. Click to read the full interview.

How To Save Your Souls in London This Summer: Take Yourselves Out of Harrods

I cannot imagine WHY you are going to London in the summer. You are just relocating the Gulf to another part of the world for 3 months. But please please my only request is to get the hell out of the Khaleeji zones: Knightsbridge/Bayswater/Oxford/Kensington/Hyde Park/etc. this summer. For most Khaleejis London is just nice weather (yes, we like it), Oxford Street, bas6at in Hyde Park, sheesha on Edgeware (vomit- the only reason you should ever be on Edgeware is to buy cheap shipping suitcases for your overweight items) and the most "eugh"-worthy pastime of all... peacocking in Harrods! The boys with their "Oil- Qatar" license plates (I swear i saw that once) and posing for Spanish tourists in front of their purple Lambos. And the Girls in Laduree, waiting for the next person to walk in so they can give them the full x-ray treatment. And the Saudi guys with their entourages all formally greeting each other in White Hall (the perfume area). And the middle-aged Birkin moms forcing their 18-year olds to buy more more more Chanel just so they can upstage their social rival who walked out with her daughter and an assistant carrying 5 huge carrier bags. And everyone going to Jaks (i mean please, the food is SO BAD and everyone i know swears that they discovered it first), Hakkasan, Samosan, La Petite, Signor Sassi, Busaba, just to see each other al over again and wear what they bought in Harrods waaaaai! Shhal 3eesha? I mean i can go on, but we are getting into polemic territory here.

Sooooooo I'll let you in on a secret. You know what London facilitates the best? WALKING. Yes that's the secret. You notice the walls of buildings are full of plaques telling you who lived there and their story? You notice its filled with beautiful parks? You notice each street is more interesting than the next? You know how many books are written on the experience of walking

in London? Lots. Black cabs are for late nights. The tube is for rush time and walking is for everything else. Walk to Holland Park. Get a pistachio gelato from Gelato Mio next to Holland Park station and walk around the neighborhood. Gaze blissfully at the Utopian rows of quiet white houses gleaming in the sunlight. Enter the park and breathe in the lush steam emanating from ripe, richly chlorophyllic plants bathing in the summer heat. Sit in the Kyoto Gardens and

zen out. Next, Go to Commercial street in Shoreditch and meet up with friends at Leon in Spitalfields to give you energy for your day-long discovery walk in the City.

Visit the really cool museum of the Bank of England and hold a zillion-pound bar of gold in your hands, maybe you'll be lucky enough to stumble upon St Dunstans in the East, a

hidden Cathedral that was bombed out during the blitz and is now the most gorgeous sitting area in London. Take a Dickensan walk around Westminster and sit by the Thames while you read his Sketches by Boz, or the gorgeous Folio Society compliation: Dickens' London, a collection of his essays on that wonderful city. Or, if your would like some really interesting guided walks from London Walks. They have everything from Jack-the-Ripper tours to Harry Potter to more general area tours. Just meet up at the tube station with you hat and a smile and make friends while you have a thoroughly joyful London day. And when you have been walking for seven hours... you will get it. You will feel the beauty, the ugliness, the pleasure, the pain, the modernity and history of this most superb of cities. You will feel like you can walk forever; you are free. And you will be happy.

Villa Moda Fake Debate: Part 2

An anonymous commenter mentioned on my previous Chanel/Villa fake post that Villa Moda came out and admitted that it was selling fakes and that Majed Al Sabah apologized in the newspapers. I started looking online, in English and Arabic to verify this apparent fact. I found no hard evidence and no articles even mentioning Villa Moda and fake in the same sentence. Majed is a really close friend of one of my best friends' parents and I asked my friend not too long ago if any of this were true and he said that not one bit of it was. If Majed really did come forth and admit to it, then I think he would have more than known about it. I kept searching and stumbled upon this forum where one commenter insisted that Villa bought "taqleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed" and posted a link to a customs form to verify it. It appeared, and let me repeat appeared to be damning. In reality, it was nothing of the sort.

It was a shipment from Hong Kong. By whom? ROSSIMODA S.P.A. To the clueless, S.P.A is the mark of an Italian-registered company. Rossimoda is a world-renowned third-party licensed producer of footwear (notice shipment said "ladies' shoes") and leather goods for companies ranging from Celine, Kenzo, Marc by Marc and Emilio Pucci to LVMH brands, which it joined with in 2000. And LVMH owns Fendi, which I believe you all remember used to be sold at Villa Moda. The commenter assumed that the fact that the goods were shipped (and assumingly made) in China was evidence that it was fake. Naive! So many luxury brands have outsourced their manufacturing to lower cost but still Italian-trained high quality factories in China and can escape the made in China label through complicated tricks. I suggest you all read Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas.

Also notice that the weight of the shipment was 53 kg. For just 12 pieces. That is a lot of weight for just 12 pairs of shoes. That means they were probably accompanied by shoe boxes and bags. As in, each shoe came in a box with tissue, supports and a shoe bag. It's just a fact that counterfeiters do not pack shoes like that. Look up news of customs raids on fakes. They flat pack their boxes to make the shipping cheaper and and assemble them on arrival. They also stuff their containers with as many pieces as they can. 12 pieces and 53 kgs are not numbers associated with counterfeiters. These are numbers that only luxury goods companies (who sell at high margins) can afford.

And Yoo Hoo Power (Look under the shipper's name under Rossimoda on the form) is a misspelling of the Yoo Hoo Tower building on Kwai Fung Crescent (again, look up) in an expensive area of Hong Kong. And Hong Kong is a very expensive city.

Illegal businesses do not set up offices in high-rent buildings, listed under "prime offices" that look like this:

Believe me. Why, if they can set up a dirt-cheap office in Guangzhou (where all purchasers of fake goods come anyway), where they have a greater chance of escaping detection by the authorities, opt to rent out some fancy glass office in a highly visible building, in a well kept (lots of police on duty) area in one of the most expensive cities in China, if not the world? Think about it.

Now I by no means with this post forever disproved that Villa Moda ever sold fake goods, but I think I pretty much obliterated that forum-poster's assertion that this piece of paper guarantees that Villa was selling fakes. If you read the book by Dana Thomas you will also notice she says that Valentino for example produces suits sold to the US and Europe in different factories than those he sends to Japan. They do not look the same. Now this is speculative but absolutely not unsubstantiated, but maybe when those people took their stuff to Cannes or London, they were holding models made specifically for Asia or the Middle East that do not go to Europe and therefore the staff would not be acquainted with them and assume they are fake. This may apply to many brands but probably (but i'm not sure) not to Chanel though. I care about this so much because I am virulently against counterfeiting and I hate gossip with a passion. It was never right to throw around "facts" about people and accuse them left and right when you do not know what you are talking about (like the lady who posted on the forum). So get your facts straight guys, and I won't stop until I lay out all the facts and rest this case once and for bloody all.

Sincerely yours,

Miss G- 007

ps. And no one can say that I was paid by Villa Moda because I have never advertised on my blog and Villa Moda is practically dead now (they aren't selling anything, or any new stock). So take THAT conspiracy theorists!

I Think I'm On To Something Here: The Making of a Style Star

Okay, Abdulla A is offish my FAVORITE tumbleristo. He looks like he has a lot of fun and although his style and tumblr Abdulla Oblongata (get it? ...like Medulla Oblongata. In the brain) contain kitschy/hipster elements, they are very happy in spirit. I don't know how else to say it. It doesn't seem like he's trying to be all ironic (boooring) but that he actually likes these funny aesthetics. And I appreciate that very much. So I suggest you all go and start perusing his fantastic tumblr! And I love the gilet. Its like look at me, piece of meat with my muffin-top haircut. But I'm halal! Hahahahah. And we both loved the Givenchy Couture burga3 jumpsuit. So props to him for good taste ;)

Dreaming of Syrupy Peaches and Frosty Pineapples

The latest Chanel sell-out. Mimosa.

Boushiya

These pictures are from UAEboy's flickr. He is really good at photoshop and I love that "plastic moza" picture!

Kuwaitis on Lookbook: A.K.F

Last Lookbook post of the day, i promise! I can't help it i have a bingey personality. Anyway, most Gulfy Lookbookettes are (I'm not gona say muhajababes- i can't stand that word) muhajabat oddly. And thats cool cause they do some crazy stuff with turbans! Which is always a plus in my books! This is A.K.F. The fun she has with fashion really shows in her photos and her style and backgrounds are always a treat. Hype time!

Kuwaitis on Lookbook: Abdulla A

I really like this guy! This Boston-Kuwaiti's take on the hipster look is very refreshing. Its more street than American Apparel and more artistic than 90's hip-hop culture. Hype away people! His Lookbook.

Kuwaitis on Lookbook: Aziz M (The Artist)

Boy is fierce! Click here to browse. And may I just say, Lookbook is soooo depressing. Full of skinny people makes you feel awful. And Aziz I am DYING for your Rad Hourani pants!

Typical Kuwaiti Ladies: Profile 1

Disclaimer: I poke fun at the Kuwaiti public in general. None of these profiles are meant as personal attacks and I in no way mean to insult or demean any segment of the population at the expense of another.

Now enjoy,

G

Update: OMG this is so bloody annoying I tried everything to put up an enlargeable pic but nothing worked (putting thumbnails would give me very grainy large pics for some reason). So just go to my flickr and just download the original and zoom in at your pleasure. Its very simple, really.

***Since the writing is so unreadable I'm just going to write down everything in the pic and next time I'll change the font***

THE TYPICAL "MOWATHAFA 7OKOOMIYA" IN ANY MINISTRY

1. Chinese Devil Eyebrows: To scare you away from her cubicle just in case you need to get something done. God forbid!

2. A face full of cake-up: Courtesy of Haleema Boland's make-up artist's Youtube tutorials.

3. Your mo3amala/application/letter/forms/scholarship papers that will never see the light of day again: And don't you dare blame her (how dare you)! Its the new system.

4. Blingin 3abaya: If it ain't sequinned, she don't wear it.

5. The Perfuuuume: the horror! She spreays in "sessions", and there are at least 10 "sessions" until noon (When she leaves the office: shino shayfeenha fathya?) Smells exactly like a mixture of sugar, acid and DDT

6. The Goody box: this is where she keeps all of her "special" heart-shaped paperclips (one for the Wazir's documents), fluffy sparkly pens and emergency make-up supplies.

7. Hidden: Heels the size of a nuclear plant, and with as many bells and whistles.

8. Cake Landan: One of the daily orders of mo3ajanat and 7alawiyat our mowathafa shares with 7anano, Hebo and 7aleemo over their 2 hour 45 minute breakfast/chatfest where they complain about how much they have to work and exchange tips on how better to evade the new thumbprint system.

_____________________________________________________________________

hangs: With the family in the sitting room (there is always a lot of Kleenex around) until her friends come over at 11 to watch the latest Turkish soap opera and gossip about celeb news gathered from " Al Maw3id" magazine

studied: Anything at KU

husband/Boyfriend: Waiting for... and convinced didn't get one because Hanadi from Depertment c "3ainha 7ara" and jinxed her when she saw her special new abaya October of last year. Meanwhile meets her boyfriend on the "wajha al ba7riyya" mamsha. He's the one with the fisfori wanait.

specializes in: e-mail forwards with titles like "woman or man, can you tell?", "3irs bint al Waleed Bin Talal" and "Do3aa2 mokha9a9 lilnisaa2: Yam7i al thonoob al mota3ali8a bi isti3mal and mikyaj fi shahr Ramadhan al mobarak"

eats: mo3ajanat. 24/7. and Lebanese food at Qa9r al Birdoni or Palm Palace

drives: Camry. Corolla. Infiniti FX35 or if she secured a "strategic" placement as mo3amalat-handler at the Minister's office she may just have a Bentley coupe. "Family money". A7m.

You Buy Fake. You Are Criminal. End of Story.

This is a long post but i suggest you read it.

I want to start off this post by stating veeery clearly that I am not stigmatizing people who may not be able to afford purchasing expensive designer products. Not at all, in fact. Chanel, Hermes, Chloe, Celine, Valentino etc etc bags are bloody expensive and if you can't afford one, who the hell cares? Not many people can. That doesn't make them better, happier, more elegant or more stylish. It just means they have a Chanel bag. I recently read something on a handbag forum (shut up i know i know) that disturbed me. This woman said that she was in her mid-forties and now could afford an expensive designer bag. She asked the forum which bag they though would "complete her happiness". I wanted to reply: NO BAG lady! No bag is going to complete your happiness; its just a pretty rearrangement of soft leather and brass pieces for God's sake! It is this insane attachment to and attachment of social and esoteric value to luxury products which is driving both the luxury and (ironically) counterfeit industry.To hell with labels, brand cults and titles of "most expensive". Leave that to the marketers and enjoy fashion for what it is: an uncontrived expression of you and your love for beauty in all its forms. Being "stylish" has nothing to do with buying designer goods, in fact nothing in the world is less stylish than copy-pasting stupid magazine trends, adding "edgy" accessories, a Chanel bag and thinking yourself stylish. And in that case anyway (once again) you are only doing it to be labelled "stylish" and not because you love it.

I know many girls who are so desperate for a bag to confer social status and admiration upon them that while waiting for their real Birkin to arrive, bought a fake "default" Birkin from Zahra (reality check: Hermes DESTROY all of the bags that don't pass inspection. What they're selling you is a fake.) And I come now to the real reason for writing this post. This is the real

story of counterfeiting. Its a crime. Please read these extracts from Deluxe: How Luxury Lost it's Luster by Dana Thomas:

"The FBI believes that terrorists financed the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 with sales of counterfeit T-shirts in a store on Broadway in New York City, according to the IACC. Interpol secretary general Ronald K.Noble told the US House Committee on International Relations in 2003 that profits form counterfeit goods sales have gone to groups associated with ... Hezbollah, paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, and Colombia's main rebel army FARC. One of the suspects in the March 2004 Madrid train bombing is a known counterfeiter, according to the United

Kingdom-based Anti-Counterfeiting Group. pgs 275-76

"While customs seizures of counterfeit goods continue to rise, a vast amount makes it through. The shipping containers are put directly onto trucks and hauled either to the warehouses to be stored or to the workshops to be assembled and stamped by clandestine workers. This is where the human trafficking fits into the puzzle: the workers, sometimes children, have been sold into labor. They, too, have been shipped over and smuggled in. They are taken to tenement factories and often locked in. There they live, work, sleep. 'I went on a raid in a sweatshop in Brooklyn, and illegal workers where hiding in a rat hole,' Barbara Kolsun, senior vice president and general counsel for Kate Spade, told me. 'It was filthy and it was impossible to

know how old the workers were.' The gangs then have the counterfeit goods transported to stores in wholesale markets... where they are purchased by tourists, flea-market merchants, purse-party ladies and suburbanites who believe that buying, selling or owning fakes is... 'a victimless crime'". 283-84

If it is this bad in the US, then imagine how bad it must be here in the Gulf, where the authorities routinely turn the other cheek to counterfeiting and human rights violations. Also, the average spending power of a Khaleeji is much higher than most other countries because of

government redistribution schemes, welfare and lack of taxes so the consumer market here is enormous. Do not underestimate the size of the fake market in Gulf countries.

Dana Thomas took part in a raid on a counterfeit workshop in Guangzhou and this is what she saw:

"We walked into the workshop--- a long, wide room with barred windows--- and before us stood two dozen Chinese boys and girls, roughly eight to fourteen, sitting at old sewing machines and standing behind plywood worktables littered with scraps leather... glue, and a cookie tin filled with stamps reading Versace, Boss and Dunhill."

"The cops told the children to line up single file. They looked at us with their sweet

faces filled with confusion, their eyes tired and sad: they didn't know why they were told to stop working. As they walked out, some stopped to punch their time cards in hope of getting paid."

"Many of the children in counterfeit workshops have been sold into labor by their families in the countryside... Some families... sell their children because they believe that the children will have a better life in the city. But selling children has become a big business in China. The children work in factories or turn to prostitution and send their money home or bring it to their parents when they return home for the Chinese New Year. Most earn between $50 to $100 a month in factories." -288

This is the WORST, it made me sick for a week when I first read it:

"Sometimes the cases are truly horrific. 'I remember walking into an assembly plant in Thailand a couple years ago and seeing six or seven little children, all under ten years old, sitting on the floor assembling counterfeit leather handbags,' the investigator told me... 'The owners has broken the chilldren's legs and tied the lower leg to the thigh so the bones wouldn't mend. He did it because the children said they wanted to go outside and play." -288

Imagine. These cruel, disgusting factory owners ruined these poor children's lives forever because they know that out there some Kuwaiti woman is going to want a fake handbag to

show off in front of her friends. It makes me nauseous.

And just in case this all sounds so far away and irrelevant:

I read in Bazaar a while back that the same was done to kids stolen while walking to school in Bangladesh because they had small fingers, suitable for making fake Rolexs. My driver's young son was stolen around a decade ago by one of these gangs and thank God we acted quickly and managed to bribe the right people to get him back (If we went through the "proper channels" he would have been lost forever). It is real, it happens and it is supported by us shoppers. On my school's Senior Trip to Malaysia, a bunch of my guy friends thought it would be funny to buy high-quality fake Rolexs from Chinatown for the teachers as a joke. I was horrified but they thought I was overreacting. Had they seen the stolen, imprisoned and destroyed children who had made them, I wonder if any of them would have made the same choice. Is it a joke that my driver's son was stolen? He was poor, far away and helpless. He went through hell. Is that a joke too?

I have heard cruel people say that "they are poor, they weren't going go to school anyway. What can they do, they have to work." I'll tell you what. Counterfeiting is an ILLEGAL industry. ILLEGAL industries employ ILLEGAL workers and have ILLEGAL practices. A legal, registered company does not employ stolen children and break their legs. ILLEGAL industries do not pay taxes (which enable states to pay for education subsidies). Without these illegal industries, parents will not be convinced that their children will have better lives in the city because the slimy agent who convinced them to part with their child for a sum wouldn't exist. Even if they were still poor, they would be with their parents, working on a farm maybe. The capital which allows these factories to exist could be redirected towards legitimate enterprises if the demand subsides. There is no supply without demand. And if you buy fake goods, you ARE the demand. So there is no way out of it, buying one fake bag is a crime that feeds a 600 billion dollar a year industry that puts money in drug lords' pockets and enslaves children in sweatshops.

Our culture stigmatizes buying fakes simply from a socio-economic perspective. People are only scared that people will "find out" or think you can't afford the real thing. But now you know what you are really doing when buying a fake. Participating in crime.

Think about it.