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Who Is the Fashion Czarina and Art-World Socialite Miroslava Duma, Recently Named in the Mueller Report?
Obviously we found an art angle on the biggest news story of 2019.
Obviously we found an art angle on the biggest news story of 2019.
Caroline Goldstein ShareShare This Article
Russian czarina Miroslava “Mira” Duma, who founded the lifestyle and culture website Buro 24/7, has made a surprise cameo in the Mueller report. So now the question is—who is Mira Duma?
Duma may be best known in art circles for a 2014 blunder in which Buro 24/7 featured a photo of Russian art patron and Garage Museum co-founder Dasha Zhukova seated on a chair shaped like a black woman in stripper apparel by British artist Allen Jones. (Duma apologized on Instagram and cropped the chair out of the photo online.)
Now Duma finds herself in the midst of controversy again as her name lit up social media for its inclusion in Mueller’s report for her role as a liaison to Sergei Prikhodko, Russia’s deputy prime minister. In December 2015, Prikhodko asked Duma to reach out to her fellow fashionista Ivanka Trump and her father, then presidential candidate Donald Trump, to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum as his guest. Duma extended the invitation, though, in the end, Donald Trump declined, citing his “very grueling and full travel schedule.”
Duma first entered the public eye as a street-style icon who favored jean shorts and oversize sunglasses. Now, at 34, she’s a mainstay in the front row of fashion week events and at art parties around the world. Her Instagram account shows photos of her posing with Takashi Murakami at ComplexCon in 2018, and with Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS, at Galerie Perrotin last June.
In March 2018, Duma left Buro 24/7 to focus on her new sustainable fashion company, Future Tech Lab, but she continues to make more of a name for herself by sparking outrage over her offensive comments. Last year, she came under fire again for saying that she supported “censorship” to keep transgender and gender non-conforming models from appearing in fashion shows. Around the same time, Duma posted a photo on Instagram showing a note from a friend that included the n-word.
Duma has other close Russian political ties beyond the deputy prime minister. Her husband is Aleksey Mikheev, who works in the Russian Ministry of Trade, and her father is a former Russian senator.