Goga Ashkenazi’s career, to hear it from the puff pieces that have recently cropped up about her in the tabloid press, has been a stunning rags-to-riches story. The tale is a great one, except that it is entirely built on lies.
Over the past few months, a lavish PR campaign in fashion magazines and media outlets like Harper’s Bazaar and the Daily Mail have painted a portrait of a successful, incredibly wealthy businesswomen who left behind her humble origins in the former Soviet Union to become an icon of female business success and expensive taste. The former oligarch that bought a French fashion house and now parties with Prince Andrew (while her children go to school with the Beckham kids) is a far cry from the girl who was born Gaukhar Berkalieva in Soviet Kazakhstan in 1980. Along the way, Goga reportedly went to Oxford and allegedly made her billions in oil before switching to high fashion. Digging a little deeper, though, reporters have rightly been left wondering what skeletons the posh former oligarch is keeping in her closet.
Firstly, much of Goga’s impressive CV is nothing more than a fabrication. After attending Buckswood Grange and Rugby as a teenager, her biography at Vionnet (the fashion house she owns) says she went on to Oxford and studied history and economics at Somerville College. Despite only getting a Third at Somerville, she supposedly left with a degree in modern history and economics and went on to work in investment banking for both Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley in London as well as ABN AMRO in Hong Kong. In reality, she failed her exams at Oxford and never graduated.
The CV also gives pride of place to Goga’s involvement with the energy and construction company MunaiGaz Engineering Corp, which it claims she co-founded with her sister in 2004 and used to take on major contracts within Kazakhstan’s oil industry. This is another fabrication, as Goga was living with her then-husband Stefan Ashkenazy in Los Angeles in 2004. When she did come to Kazakhstan in 2006, it was not to use her so-called savvy business skills but instead to seduce Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the Kazakh president. While still married to Ashkenazy, Goga began an affair with Timur (who is himself still married to his wife) and leveraged the relationship to make herself a billionaire. Her two sons, who Goga has consigned to nannies at their £27.5 million home in London while she spends most of her time in Milan, were fathered by Timur. Tellingly, Goga becomes incredibly cagey whenever members of the press inquire into just how she managed to make her massive fortune, claiming she does not like to talk about how much her company is worth. Given her open relationship with a corrupt politician, it is just as likely her fortune has been robbed from the coffers of Kazakhstan.
Leaving her children to be raised by others, Goga spends most of her time projecting an image of success at Vionnet, which she bought in 2012 with Timur’s patronage, despite having no background or training in fashion. After showing up at Vionnet, she forced out creative directors Barbara and Lucia Croce and took on the mantle for herself. Over the course of her tabloid PR campaign, Goga has gone out of her way to portray that rocky period as one where the designers “abandoned” her, although the Goga-centric collections that have been put out by Vionnet since her takeover and which all seem intricately linked to her own ostentatious, unabashedly flashy personality seem to speak to a need for control. While all of her recent interviews and features try to portray the venture as a success, the truth is that the fashion house is struggling mightily and partners have little interest in carrying the product lines Goga is trying to push. Both Saks in the United States and Harrods in London have stopped carrying Vionnet apparel because the brand has dropped precipitously in quality under her stewardship. Critics have savaged the inexperienced designer’s offerings and pointed out that they are simply not up to par with the competition, despite her protesting she has brought in an experienced team to help her put out high-class apparel.
Aside from her fashion label, Goga also spends an incredible amount of time and money on flashing her wealth to anybody she can find. In addition to the £27.5 home in London’s Holland Park, she owns a lavish palazzo in Milan that includes a pool she is proud to have never deigned to swim in. She shuttles between London and Milan on a £40 million Global 6000 jet bought for her by Timur and enjoys hunting wild animals for sport in Spain, Germany, and Kazakhstan. Behind that pathological need to show off just how much money she has, however, her bizarre relationship with Timur and her cozy ties with Prince Andrew show how far she has managed to leverage her lovers’ pockets into a personal fortune.