Miroslava Duma: How a Street Style Star Ended Up in the Mueller Report
The Mueller Report is finally here—or at least some of it. Redacted as its 446 pages may be, though, two thoroughly unexpected words made the cut: Miroslava Duma. Thousands of interviews, hundreds of subpoenas, and nearly 5,000 search-and-seizure warrants may not have been thorough enough for the special counsel to exonerate Trump, but somehow, they were thorough enough to not only turn up the name of a 34-year-old influencer and street style star but give her even more real estate in the report than Melania Trump.
Like Melania’s, Duma’s name only appears in the report once. Still, that one appearance is much more than one would expect. Born in Surgut, a city in western Siberia, Russia, Duma has established an international presence over the past decade, in which she’s founded both Buro 24/7, a fashion-and-lifestyle media company, and Future Tech Lab, a venture capital fund, all in between appearing at seemingly every fashion week around the world you can think of. Her social circle consists of exactly who you’d expect: designers like Ulyana Sergeenko and models like Natalia Vodianova. If there’s ever a wild card thrown in there, it’s someone along the lines of Kim Kardashian West—most definitely not someone like Robert Mueller or William Barr.
But let’s not forget that a member of the current Trump administration was in the same types of fashion-related socialite circles as Duma once upon a time. It doesn’t seem like the pair will spend much time together in the future, though, seeing as the report also names the person who led to Duma’s inclusion. (Hint: She’s described as “a contact of Ivanka Trump‘s from the fashion industry.”)
Apparently, that’s how Sergei Prikhodko, a deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation, has thought of Duma, too, seeing as he enlisted her to put him in touch with Ivanka and her father in 2015. In late December of that year, Duma delivered two invitations to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum to both Ivanka and Donald Trump on Prikdhodko’s behalf. If he’d been hoping that Duma’s proximity to Ivanka would get him a speedy response, well, that didn’t end up being the case. It took more than two weeks for Donald’s assistant to inform Duma that he would “‘have to decline’ the invitation, given his ‘very grueling and full travel schedule’ as a presidential candidate.”
Capitol Hill might be new territory for Duma, but controversy certainly isn’t. Last year, Duma and Sergenko caused an uproar when they casually used a racial slur and shared proof that they’d done so with their their combined two million followers. (Naomi Campbell was one of the many who made their feelings about the incident clear.) Amid the backlash, more incriminating material resurfaced: a video of Duma giving a presentation in 2012, in which she refers to transgender identity as a “trend”—and one that she hopes “fizzles out,” at that.
Come to think of it, though, a connection between the two definitely makes sense. Last year, she had to deal with a “hoax”—the president’s word of choice for referring to the Mueller Report—of her own, when she became one of the Russian influencers subjected to a fake news campaign. She also has quite a few connections to politics, from her father, a former Russian senator, to her role as a consultant for the Russian Ministry of Trade and Industry.
At any rate, Duma is definitely more relevant to the report than Game of Thrones, which, nonetheless, the president can’t seem to stop dragging into this mess.
