While Milan Fashion Week is always a starry sight to behold, Bottega Veneta’s front row featured an extra flash of gold. Imane Khelif, the Olympic boxing champion from Algeria, joined Kendall Jenner, Jacob Elordi, Yara Shahidi, Julianne Moore, and Michelle Yeoh (among others) at Matthieu Blazy’s spring 2025 runway.
Photo: Getty
For her foray into high fashion, the gold medalist wore look 50 from Bottega’s fall 2024 collection, donning a mustard yellow button-up leather shacket crafted in Blazy’s signature leather, along with a pair of black leather trousers. While she left her medal at home, Khelif wore a pair of the Italian house’s viral drop earrings—in gold, of course.
Imane Khelif at the Bottega Veneta spring 2025 show. Photo: Getty
Bottega Veneta fall 2024, look 50. Photo: Gorunway.com
The 25-year-old boxer made international news during the 2024 Paris Olympics when Italy’s Angela Carini refused to shake Khelif’s hand following their 46-second match, which Carini deemed “not fair.” (Carini later issued an apology and recognized Khelif’s right to compete.) The incident, which was sparked by a 2023 International Boxing Association ruling that disqualified Khelif from the world boxing championship in New Dehli due to “competitive advantages over other female competitors,” sparked a racist and transphobic firestorm against her. The experience loomed large over Khelif’s Games. After her win, she said: “I am fully qualified to take part. I’m a woman like any other woman. I was born a woman, I lived a woman, I competed as a woman, there’s no doubt about that.”
Khelif sits front row at Bottega Veneta’s spring 2025 show in a rabbit beanbag chair. Photo: Getty
Khelif took her front row seat on a leather rabbit chair, between Moore and Shahidi. (Elordi, whose Bottega Veneta campaign featured him making bunny ears also sat on a rabbit chair.) The New York Times’s Vanessa Friedman reported that Yeoh was seated on a ladybug, and Moore a bear. Elordi’s seatmate, A$AP Rocky, was assigned a rooster. “I don’t think I’ve ever sat in something quite so puffy,” The Bear star Ebon Moss-Bachrach told Vogue of his thematically appropriate bear chair. “I don’t want to read too much into it, but obviously a bear is an important animal for me.” Though, as Blazy told reporters, the leather chairs—inspired by the Zanotta Sacco—were a yearlong project with each animal assigned specifically to attendees. So Moss-Bachrach should, in fact, read into it.
With Imane Khelif joining Bottega campaign stars Elordi, A$AP Rocky and Jenner at the show, we can only hope that she—and her gold medal—will be starring in their own campaign sooner rather than later.
Kendall Jenner at Bottega Veneta spring 2025. Photo: Getty
Jacob Elordi at Bottega Veneta spring 2025. Photo: Getty
Originally published in Vogue.com
