The bouquet of flowers was a charming gesture. The sentiment on the accompanying card not so much. When an image of a note sent by fashion designer Ulyana Sergeenko to her Russian compatriot, the tech entrepreneur Mira Duma, addressed “to my n****s in Paris”, appeared on Instagram last week, the reaction was quick and brutal.
Duma, who had included the image on her Instagram “story” — a part of the platform designed to be ephemeral — was condemned as a racist for her casual attitude to the N-word. The designer and her friend the embodiment of white privilege. There was outrage. Things escalated. Within hours, new footage emerged of Duma, the 32-year-old who has built a global platform as an ambassador for sustainability and ethical fashion. A video clip from 2012 showed her giving a talk in Russia making transphobic comments: “We would never publish someone like [Andreja] Pejic,” she said of the androgynous model, who would come out as transgender the following year. “We have censorship at Buro [her online magazine]. We’re very concerned about the beauty and purity of the things we publish.”
The video was inflammatory. Duma was removed from her role as chairwoman at one of the companies she co-founded. An attempt at an apology — “The person I was six years ago is not who I am today” — only stirred passions further. Within 24 hours, Duma’s reputation was eviscerated. Her social media feed has remained dark ever since.