Headline

Miniskirt Pioneer Dies At 93

Published

1 year ago

April 13, 2023

Editor

Fashion designer Mary Quant, the style queen of Britain’s Swinging Sixties who popularised the miniskirt, died on Thursday aged 93, her family said, prompting a flood of tributes.

Whether Quant actually invented the then scandalously short skirts has long been disputed, with French designer Andre Courreges insisting he was the first to raise hemlines high on the thigh.

But there is no doubt that without Quant, the mini would not have become an icon of 1960s youth rebellion.

The diminutive designer — whose trademark bob was styled by Vidal Sassoon — was also credited with creating hot pants, the skinny-rib sweater and waterproof mascara.

Alexandra Shulman, former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, called her a “visionary” while Britain’s V&A design museum paid tribute to her “trailblazing” legacy.

“It’s impossible to overstate Quant’s contribution to fashion,” the museum said on Twitter.

“She was one of the original disruptors, whose trend-setting work changed the way we thought as well as how we dressed,” added Professor Frances Corner of London’s Goldsmiths college, where Quant studied.

“This profound impact took us from the black and white world of the 1950s to the technicolour brilliance of the 1960s and beyond.”

– ‘Shorter, Shorter’ –
Quant opened her first boutique, Bazaar, in 1955 with her future husband and business partner Alexander Plunket Greene, who died in 1990.

Located in Chelsea, which would become the beating heart of Swinging London, the shop sold clothes and accessories and its basement restaurant became a meeting point for young people and artists.

The whole Chelsea district was soon attracting celebrities such as the actors Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn and pop stars including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Quant raised hemlines well above the knee, creating short dresses and skirts with simple shapes and strong colours that she described as “arrogant, aggressive and sexy”.

“Good taste is death, vulgarity is life,” she told The Guardian.

Her models were showcased in provocative window displays overlooking the King’s Road, which became a miniskirt catwalk and drew American photographers keen to capture Swinging London.

“City gents in bowler hats beat on our shop window with their umbrellas shouting ‘Immoral!’ and ‘Disgusting!’ at the sight of our miniskirts over the tights, but customers poured in to buy,” she recalled in her 1966 book “Quant by Quant”.

The designer was also widely quoted as saying that “it was the girls on the King’s Road who invented the mini… I wore them very short and the customers would say, ‘Shorter, shorter’”.

– ‘Quite outrageous’ –
The era’s most high-profile model Lesley Lawson, better known as Twiggy, made the miniskirt popular abroad, and with business booming, Quant opened a second shop in London in 1957.

She explored geometric designs, polka dots and contrasting colours, and played with new fabrics, including PVC and stretch fabrics, to achieve a modern and playful look.

She entered the American market in the early 1960s, collaborating with department store JC Penney. She also created the cheaper Ginger Group line and went into cosmetics, all her designs featuring a trademark daisy.

Quant also scandalised British society with her frank views on sex, making headlines when she famously said she had shaved her pubic hair into the shape of a heart and dyed it green.

Although her heyday was in the 1960s and 1970s, when she turned her sights on the Japanese market, Quant’s legacy can still be seen on the high street, with its high fashion at low prices.

She sold her make-up company to a Japanese group in 2000, staying on as consultant.

Alongside making it in America, Quant considered being knighted in 2015 her greatest achievement, and called Queen Elizabeth II, who made her a dame, “the wisest woman I’ve ever met”.

Asked by The Guardian in 2016 what she would change if she could edit her past, Quant replied: “Not much, I’ve had a lovely time.”

Headline

Iran Hangs 53-year-old Woman, Six Others

Published

2 hours ago

May 18, 2024

Editor

Iran on Saturday hanged at least seven people, including two women, while a member of its Jewish minority is at imminent risk of execution as the Islamic Republic further intensified its use of capital punishment, an NGO said.

Parvin Mousavi, 53, a mother of two grown-up children, was hanged in Urmia prison in northwestern Iran along with five men convicted in various drug-related cases, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) said in a statement.

In Nishapur in eastern Iran, a 27-year-old woman named Fatemeh Abdullahi was hanged on charges of murdering her husband, who was also her cousin, it said.

IHR says it has tallied at least 223 executions this year, with at least 50 so far in May alone. A new surge began following the end of Persian New Year and Ramadan holidays in April, with 115 people including six women hanged since then, it said.

Iran carries out more recorded executions of women than any other country. Activists say many such convicts are victims of forced or abusive marriages.

Iran last year carried out more hangings than in any year since 2015, according to NGOs, which accuse the Islamic republic of using capital punishment as a means to instill fear in the wake of protests that erupted in autumn 2022.

“The silence of the international community is unacceptable,” IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told AFP.

“Those executed belong to the poor and marginalised groups of Iranian society and didn’t have fair trials with due process.”

‘Killing machine’

IHR said Mousavi had been in prison for four years. It cited a source as saying she had been paid the equivalent of 15 euros to carry a package she had been told contained medicine but was in fact five kilos of morphine.

“They are the low-cost victims of the Islamic Republic’s killing machine, which aims at instilling fear among people to prevent new protests,” added Amiry-Moghaddam.

The group meanwhile said a member of Iran’s Jewish community, which has drastically reduced in numbers in recent years but is still the largest in the Middle East outside Israel, was at imminent risk of execution over a murder charge.

Arvin Ghahremani, 20, was convicted of murder during a street fight when he was 18 and is scheduled to be executed in the western city of Kermanshah on Monday, it said, adding it had received an audio message from his mother Sonia Saadati asking for his life to be spared.

His family is seeking to ask the family of the victim to forgo the execution in line with Iran’s Islamic law of retribution, or qesas.

Also at risk of execution is Kamran Sheikheh, the last surviving member of a group of seven Iranian Kurdish men who were first arrested between early December 2009 and late January 2010 and later sentenced to death for “corruption on earth” over alleged membership of extremist groups, it said.

Six men convicted in the same case have been executed in the last months almost one-and-a-half decades after their initial arrest, the last being Khosro Besharat who was hanged in Ghezel Hesar prison outside Tehran this week.

There has been an international outcry meanwhile over the death sentence handed out last month to Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, seen by activists as retaliation for his music backing the 2022 protests. His lawyers are appealing the verdict.

AFP

Headline

Israeli Leaders Disagree Over Post-war Gaza Governance Amid US Pressure

Published

2 hours ago

May 18, 2024

Editor

New divisions have emerged among Israel’s leaders over post-war Gaza’s governance, with an unexpected Hamas fightback in parts of the Palestinian territory piling pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across Gaza for more than seven months while also exchanging near-daily fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah forces along the northern border with Lebanon.

But after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, where Israel previously said the group had been neutralised, broad splits emerged in the Israeli war cabinet in recent days.

Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.

The Israeli premier’s outright rejection of post-war Palestinian leadership in Gaza has broken a rift among top politicians wide open and frustrated relations with top ally the United States.

Experts say the lack of clarity only serves to benefit Hamas, whose leader has insisted no new authority can be established in the territory without its involvement.

“Without an alternative to fill the vacuum, Hamas will continue to grow,” International Crisis Group analyst Mairav Zonszein told AFP.

Emmanuel Navon, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, echoed this sentiment.

“If only Hamas is left in Gaza, of course they are going to appear here and there and the Israeli army will be forced to chase them around,” said Navon.

“Either you establish an Israeli military government or an Arab-led government.”

US pressure

Gallant said in a televised address on Wednesday: “I call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza strip.”

The premier’s war planning also came under recent attack by army chief Herzi Halevi as well as top Shin Bet security agency officials, according to Israeli media reports.

Netanyahu is also under pressure from Washington to swiftly bring an end to the conflict and avoid being mired in a long counterinsurgency campaign.

Washington has previously called for a “revitalised” form of the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the war.

But Netanyahu has rejected any role for the PA in post-war Gaza, saying Thursday that it “supports terror, educates terror, finances terror”.

Instead, Netanyahu has clung to his steadfast aim of “eliminating” Hamas, asserting that “there’s no alternative to military victory”.

Experts say confidence in Netanyahu is running thin.

“With Gallant’s criticism of Netanyahu’s failure to plan for the day after in terms of governing Gaza, some real fissures are beginning to emerge in the Israeli war cabinet,” Colin P. Clarke, director of policy and research at the Soufan Group think tank, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“I’m not sure I know of many people, including the most ardent Israel supporters, who have confidence in Bibi,” he said, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

Hostage ‘impasse’

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 125 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead.

Israel’s military retaliation has killed at least 35,386 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.

Many Israelis supported Netanyahu’s blunt goals to seek revenge on Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 attack.

But now, hopes have faded for the return of the hostages and patience in Netanyahu may be running out, experts said.

On Friday, the army announced it had recovered bodies of three hostages who were killed during the October 7 attack.

After Israeli forces entered the far southern city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Gazans were sheltering, talks mediated by Egypt, the United States and Qatar to release the hostages have ground to a standstill.

“The hostage deal is at a total impasse — you can no longer provide the appearance of progress,” said Zonszein of the International Crisis Group.

“Plus the breakdown with the US and the fact that Egypt has refused to pass aid through Rafah — all those things are coming to a head.”

Headline

Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger Finalise Regional Alliance Project

Published

6 hours ago

May 18, 2024

Editor

Junta-run Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have finalised plans to form a confederation after turning their backs on former colonial ruler France to seek closer ties with Russia.

Their foreign ministers met Friday in Niger’s capital Niamey to agree on a text establishing the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

“The objective was to finalise the draft text relating to the institutionalisation and operationalisation of the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)”, said Niger Foreign Minister Bakary Yaou Sangare as he read the final statement late Friday.

He said the text would be adopted by the heads of state of the three countries at a summit, without specifying the date.

“We can consider very clearly, today, that the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has been born,” Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said after meeting General Abdourahamane Tiani, the head of Nigerien military regime.

The third foreign minister at the meeting was Burkina Faso’s Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore.

The Sahel region has been subject to deadly jihadist violence for years, which they accused France of not being able to curb.

The three countries said late January they were quitting The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which they said was under French influence, to create their own regional grouping.

AFP