It’s a couture d’état.
Fashionistas are hoping to overthrow Gulnara Karimova’s planned Fashion Week extravaganza.
Responding to outrage from human-rights groups, Fashion Week producer IMG has contacted the fashion label run by the daughter of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov and asked them to cancel the show.
“The event is exploring its legal options for cancellation,” a spokesman told The Post yesterday.
But while her family’s reputation for wrongful imprisonment and torture may not fit the résumé of a budding fashion designer, her father has close ties to Mercedes-Benz, the event’s chief sponsor.
In fact, last year, the Justice Department accused the German automaker of lavishing gifts on a number of Asian tyrants — including an armored S-Class Mercedes for the dictator of neighboring Turkmenistan — a few months before Karimov exempted the firm from paying taxes for five years on its Uzbek factories.
Gulnara Karimova did not return calls for comment as to what impact her dad’s cozy relationship with Mercedes had on her Fashion Week debut. Neither did Mercedes-Benz.
Protesters at Lincoln Center noted that the dictator and his family had profited from the slave labor of kids picking cotton.