Amal Clooney's £168,000 maternity wardrobe is her masterful ploy to raise awareness of human rights abuses

Amal Clooney gave an impassioned speech at the UN last week as part of her defence of Iraq's Yazidi people and ongoing campaign to stop ISIS from committing further brutality.  "Justice is what the victims want," Clooney said, "but justice will be forever out of reach if we allow the evidence to disappear, if mass graves are not protected, if medical evidence is lost, if witnesses can no longer be traced."

She happened to deliver this impassioned speech in a bright yellow dress and matching coat from Bottega Veneta - one of a series £20,000+ designer looks she wore during her trip to New York. 

As you might expect from today's 24/7 media, the press coverage of Clooney's New York business trip has ranged from forensic detailing and scrutiny of the £168,000 designer "maternity wardrobe" she has showcased over the past few weeks to outrage that anyone should dare to notice or comment upon her clothes when she's working on such highbrow human rights issues. 

But whilst of course it's utterly unnecessary to talk of women "flaunting" their baby bumps or question whether Clooney should be wearing 4 and a half inch heels at 6 months pregnant (short answer: there's no medical reason why not), it's surely unhelpful to have such a dichotomy of opinions. 

After all, Clooney herself has not only mastered the alchemy of fashion and campaigning since she became George Clooney's wife in 2014, but recognises the power that her public image can bring to her professional work. "If there are more people who now understand what is happening with the Yazidis and ISIS and if there can be some action which results from that... then I think it's a really good thing to give that case the extra publicity that it may get," Clooney told the BBC last week of making peace with the scrutiny she now faces as a celebrity and working woman. 

As such, we're missing the point if we don't recognise that Clooney might well be using her public image - and fashion as part of that - as a potent weapon to raise awareness of global human rights abuses, especially among people who might not otherwise hear them.

You may think that's a sad truth, but it's one Clooney is toying with masterfully - rather than choosing to ignore. She proves herself to be infinitely smarter than anyone who worries that clothes and harrowing cases of human rights abuses can't be talked about in the same paragraph, because what she wears is a tool for widening the scope of interest in what she does. The choice of a vintage Dior skirt suit or a Gucci dress might be the hook in but while we're there looking at that picture, we'll learn about the plight of those victims she's passionately defending.

Besides, what if Clooney happens to be a woman who both appreciates the bold statement-making abilities of a daffodil-yellow Bottega Veneta dress and coat but is also professionally and personally concerned about the plight of young women like Nadia Murad, the Yazidi woman she represents captured and raped by Isil in Iraq in 2014? The two interests are not mutually exclusive. And to suggest they are isn't just sexist - it's undermining an industry that brings in £28 billion a year to the UK economy alone. 

That's a sentiment that led to British Vogue’s editor Alexandra Shulman commissioning the Real Issue of Vogue - an issue free of models. “I feel strongly that women who are in positions of authority or power, or who work in professions should be able to indulge their interest in clothes and fashion without it seeming frivolous or that they don't care about their jobs enough,” she told The Telegraph  at the time. "In this country there is still a stigma attached to clearly enjoying how you look and experimenting with it if you are a woman in the public eye and not in the fashion or entertainment business.”

Of course, Clooney is much more than a fashion plate (breaking news: all women who love fashion are) but let's not dismiss the immense influence of her personal brand of power dressing. She knows what she's doing as she strides to speak to ambassadors in a pair of £780 heels; let's not patronize her by pretending otherwise. 

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