Saturday, April 23, 2011

Hawass and the designer clothing line

Hawass again found himself under fire in the headlines, this time for selling his name to a clothes designer who launched a clothing line named after him, currently for sale in Harrods. Part of the furor was that seemed as though they had used the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to promote the new line, but Hawass and the team who took the photographs say that the photo shoot actually took place in the U.S. when the Tutankhamun exhibition was touring and that any of the objects handled or sat upon were replicas. The photographic team also confirms that a photograph of a model with a foot on an item was achieved with photo manipulation. He is quoted saying that all his income from the line will go to a children's cancer hospital in Cairo.


Al Ahram Weekly (a summary of the case for the defense)
New York Times (a good summary of the furor and a description of the line, together with one of photographs used to promote it)
Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues (Paul Barford wonders if the world has gone mad, over-reacting to the Hawass-branded clothing line)

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