Giambattista Valli, Zac Posen, Imaan Hammam, and More Attended Natalia Vodianova’s Lavish Love Ball Arabia

Love Ball in Doha

A week of festivities in Doha that included the unveiling of the sensational National Museum of Qatar by Jean Nouvel and the inaugural Fashion Trust Arabia Prawards was crowned with the sixth iteration of Natalia Vodianova’s Naked Heart Foundation Love Ball under the patronage of Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, chairperson of the Qatar Museums. Her Excellency had suggested that Vodianova consider Doha as a location for the ball, as 2018 had been declared the Year of Culture between Russia and Qatar.

The scintillating evening benefitted Doha’s Al Shafallah Center, which provides educational and rehabilitation resources to people with mental disabilities and autism, as well as the Naked Heart Foundation itself, which, as Vodianova points out, has helped more than 10,000 children and their families “to live life to their fullest potential,” building 200 play facilities in more than 150 towns and cities around Russia—and, now, around the wider world, too. Vodianova was moved to action by witnessing the plight of her own sister Oksana, who has cerebral palsy and autism and whose needs at the time were not adequately met by her country’s existing infrastructure.

Three years in the making, the evening was a celebration of Russian style in the most quintessential of Qatari settings: Doha’s sublime Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I. M. Pei on a peninsula next to the Dhow Harbour and unveiled in 2008. (I had spent an enriching morning there earlier in my visit to Doha.)

Vodianova partnered with her friend, couturier Ulyana Sergeenko, the creative director of the evening, and the Russia-Qatar culture clash provided for some surreal sensory experiences. Guests were greeted at the laser-lit museum by Russian women in chic folklorique dress and serenaded on the balmy terrace with its views to the spectacular Doha skyline, brilliantly lit in different colors, to a band playing Tchaikovsky ballet music.

Inside the monumentally scaled Pei atrium, video projections on the walls transformed the space into a poetic silver-birch forest seen through the seasons. The glossy Soviet-red lacquer tables were heaving with caviar from Astrakhan, Karelia, and the Caspian Sea, along with other traditional Russian specialities from areas across the vast country, from Krasnodar to Kamchatka, which were curated and subtly reworked by the star Russian chef George Troyan; dishes included produce grown by children in the greenhouses at the Al Shafallah Center.

“Our angle was inclusion,” says Vodianova. Napkins were printed with designs by young adults from the Anton’s Right Here Center in St. Petersburg, and the program cover featured work by 12-year-old Markus Martinovich, who lives with autism and physical disabilities. (It was also included as one of the 16 auction items.)

The controversial dancer Sergei Polunin, the Ukranian-born former Royal Ballet wild-child prodigy (who provides an arresting supporting role in director Ralph Fiennes’s upcoming movie The White Crow, which is about Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West in 1961), staged a piece inspired by an apparently fairly dystopian response to an earlier visit to Qatar, performed with Stas, an actor with Down Syndrome, that seemed to be suggesting that a man who had all material benefits lacked a soul. A gradual awakening to the needs of his fellow man—helped by Stas—ultimately helped fill this void. It was all very Russian: I wondered what the Qataris made of it all, though Polunin can certainly leap his way down a runway in a manner that takes the breath away.

During dinner, the Interaction Fund Theater, headed by artistic director Alexander Sazonov, staged another powerful piece with actors from the troupe while accompanied by 14 young actors with special needs, who appeared at every table speaking the real words of family members who had painfully navigated the complexities of living with siblings and children with mental and physical disability and autism in places that were often not equipped to deal with these issues. The cacophony of voices at every table was deafening, and the strong actress at ours, bringing herself to tears, compelled the attention of Hailee Steinfeld, Darren Criss, and a flock of supermodels—including Alessandra Ambrosio, Cindy Bruna, Jourdan Dunn, and the Russian-born Sasha Luss—all of them dressed in our host Olivier Rousteing’s galactic couture and spangles. The international fashion set was out in full force in this most luxury-hungry city: Giambattista Valli, Zac Posen, Peter Dundas, Edgardo Osorio, and Sergeenko collaborator Stephen Jones among them.

Iman served as droll mistress of ceremonies in a spectacular red tulle crinoline by Christian Siriano, apologizing that she needed her reading glasses to deal with the notes, but noting that it was only to be expected at 64. (How is that humanly possible?!) Diane von Furstenberg introduced Vodianova to the podium and recalled how she had hosted the first-ever fundraiser for her when naiveté proved to be the mother of invention—and reminded us all what a force of nature this remarkable woman was and remains.

Sergeenko’s haute couture runway presentation took us back to Turgenev’s Russia and featured Madeline Stuart, a model with Down Syndrome, and Vodianova herself in a custom shell pink taffeta gown, exquisitely embroidered in seed pearls, which was giving me a whiff of Lady Diana Spencer’s Emanuel wedding gown. (Vodianova’s dress was also included in the auction lots.)

If the auction started a tad sluggishly, the unstoppable Vodianova soon got the action going—and by the end of the evening, having guilt-tripped and cajoled in her uniquely seductive way, she was delighted to announce that she had raised an astounding $7.5 million—beating the Love Ball’s previous record of $5 million—for the children of Qatar and Russia with special needs. Brava!