DOHA, Qatar — The evening after Fashion Trust Arabia’s star-studded awards ceremony, the fashion world reconvened for a more intimate cause: honoring the legacy of Franca Sozzani while raising funds to advance preventive genomics research.
The inaugural Franca Fund Gala, held at the Museum of Islamic Art on Sunday, brought together Anna Wintour, Sheikha Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and Francesco Carrozzini, Sozzani’s son and cofounder of the Franca Sozzani Fund for Preventive Genomics. The mission: to raise more than $4 million for medical research at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham.
“Sheikha Mayassa was a great friend of Franca’s, and Francesco remembers coming here with his mother as a younger man,” Wintour told WWD. “When we were thinking about the event, the sheikha very kindly agreed to support us and help us and cohost. It was so generous and kind of her.”
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The evening drew a remarkable guest list that included Queen Rania of Jordan, Miuccia Prada, Gisele Bündchen, François-Henri Pinault, Natalia Vodianova, Selma Blair, Tessa Thompson, Tyra Banks, and designers including Christian Louboutin, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Simone Rocha, and Giambattista Valli.
Carrozzini delivered an emotional keynote, thanking Wintour, who is his mother-in-law, and channeling his mother’s philosophy. “She once told me, ‘If it’s not strange, it’s not new. And if it’s not new, it won’t matter,’” he recalled. “That was Franca, fearless, restless, always pushing everyone, including herself, to see what others did not see.”
He framed the fund’s mission in terms his mother would have embraced. “Health, like creativity, should not be a privilege. Preventive genomics has the power to save lives, not years from now, but today.”
Dr. Robert Green, the Harvard professor of medicine leading the research, outlined the stakes. His team first analyzed the DNA of a healthy newborn in 2015 and discovered that nearly one in 10 babies carries genetic markers for diseases they may develop over their lifetime — conditions that can be treated or even prevented when detected early.
“Could Qatar become the first nation on Earth to offer sequencing to every child, maybe in the next two to three years?” Dr. Green asked the crowd. “This isn’t just about health care. This is about economics as well.”
Sheikha Mayassa recalled meeting Sozzani in 2013 at the opening of a Damien Hirst exhibition in Doha — the same artist who donated a portrait of Sozzani for the evening’s auction. “She taught us that beauty must reveal truth, not conceal it, that aesthetics must serve ethics.”
The silent auction raised significant sums for the cause. The Damien Hirst portrait of Sozzani sold for $380,000, while a private tennis lesson with Jannik Sinner — the first time the world number one has offered such an experience — went for $350,000 to Qatar’s minister of health. An Audemars Piguet watch fetched $280,000.
Wintour reflected on the fashion industry’s long history of rallying around causes, from the AIDS crisis to COVID-19 relief. “They’re always the first to step up, and they’re the first to step up as a community,” she said.
With U.S. funding for medical research facing potential cuts, she noted the evening’s significance. “I know that Francesco’s team of doctors are very concerned about funding for the future, so it makes tonight even more important.”
Sozzani, who died in 2016, was known for using Vogue Italia as a platform for social commentary — publishing groundbreaking issues on domestic violence, the BP oil spill, and plastic surgery. Wintour said her late friend would have been moved by the evening.
“She always believed in using her platform to help others,” Wintour said. “I think she would be honored and thrilled, but so proud of her son. They had the most remarkable relationship. She really brought him up as a single mother, and I think that she would see that he was really following in her footsteps.”
