While Milan Fashion Week is always star-studded, Bottega Veneta’s front row had extra golden sparkle. Algerian Olympic boxing champion Imane Khalif appeared in Matthew Blazy’s Spring 2025 show alongside Kendall Jenner, Jacob Elordi, Yara Shahidi, Julianne Moore, and Michelle Yeoh (among others).
Stepping into the world of high fashion, the gold medalist wore Look 50 from Bottega’s Fall 2024 collection, a mustard button-down leather jacket in Blazy’s signature leather, paired with black leather pants. When Khalif left her medal at home, she wore a pair of the Italian brand’s popular drop earrings — in gold, of course.
The 25-year-old boxer made international headlines during the 2024 Paris Olympics when Italy’s Angela Carini refused to shake Khalif’s hand after 46 seconds of fighting, which Carini deemed “inappropriate”. (Carini later issued an apology and acknowledged Khalif’s right to compete.) The incident, triggered by the International Boxing Association’s 2023 decision to dethrone Khalifa for the World Boxing Championships due to her “competitive advantage relative to other female fighters”, has raised eyebrows in New Delhi. This experience was particularly significant for Khalif at the Olympics. After winning, she said: “I am fully qualified to participate. I am a woman like any other woman. I was born a woman, I lived my life as a woman and I compete as a woman, there is no doubt about that.”
Khalif was seated in the front row between Moore and Shahidi on a rabbit-skin chair. (Elordi’s Bottega Veneta campaign features rabbit ears, in which he also sits on a rabbit chair.) The New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman reported that Young sat on a ladybug, while Moore sat on a bear. A$AP Rocky was assigned a rooster in Elordi’s seat. “I don’t think I’ve ever sat on something so fluffy,” Bears star Ebon Moss-Bachrach told Eskom about his theme-appropriate bear chair. “I don’t want to read too much into it, but apparently the bear is an important animal to me.” Especially assigned to attendees. So Moss-Bachrach must have really thought deeply about this.
With Imane Khalif joining Bottega campaign stars Elordi, A$AP Rocky, and Jenner on the runway, we can only hope that she and her gold will soon be the star of their own campaign.
