How the Assads shopped for luxury while Syria burned

Soft power and soft furnishings, Chanel and sanctions, Harrods and helicopter bombs — follow the money in luxury closely enough and you’ll soon end up in some pretty dark and weird places

This week’s newsletter takes us into the heart of the Assad regime to reveal how as thousands of innocent people were slaughtered, Asma Al-Assad quietly shopped. Meanwhile, videos posted on social media revealed bespoke suits, watches and an expensive but strangely banal car collection in the palaces in Damascus, which Conrad Quilty-Harper examines in detail.

Of course, it’s sometimes impossible for brands to control who buys their products, but what’s grim and fascinating about the Assads is how they used acceptable western notions of “good taste” to help normalise their image, most notably via a now-deleted but forever notorious 2011 profile in American Vogue. Alfred Tong interviews Peter York, author of Dictator’s Homes, to discover how “taste” was a form of soft power for the Assad family.

Finally, freelance investigative journalist John Simpson takes a closer look at the looted palaces to get a positive ID on some of the products including a rare Louis Vuitton trunk.

Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma, with his children Zein (left), Karim (second right) and Hafez (right). Credit: (Former) Syrian Presidency Facebook page

To kick things off Conrad cracks open the cache of leaked emails to provide an intimate glimpse of the Assad lifestyle, a place where horrendous violence and quiet luxury seemed to co-exist seamlessly. This is as dark as Dark Luxury gets.

The Assad emails

Conrad Quilty-Harper

The rapid collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime after decades of terror, secret imprisonments and assassinations – and chemical attacks on civilians – has revealed something that depositions of dictators often reveal. The conspicuous consumption of luxury products. I covered the leak of thousands of the Assad couple’s emails at the Telegraph 12 years ago which suggested that while the country burned, Asma and Bashar shopped, sometimes through third parties.

Asma sent emails asking about Harry Potter DVDs. Her husband asked for help buying songs on iTunes. At one point she emailed about a £8,200 bill for furniture, the same day 100 civilians died after attacks by the Syrian army. More than half of her emails related to brands such as John Lewis, Waitrose and LK Bennett, many of them email newsletters sent from the retailers.