Model defends using Peruvian flag as dress

Last month, a Peruvian model/attention seeker faced massive public scrutiny over posing naked on top of the Peruvian flag for a magazine cover. The exaggerated outrage led to a tearful apology from Leysi Suarez who was threatened with jail time for her racy yet patriotic snapshots.

The shit may hit the fan again (if you’ll pardon my language) after Peruvian model Karla Casós wore her country’s flag as a dress during a fashion show in Santiago, Chile. Chilean fashion designer Ricardo Oyaizu claimed to have made the dress in order to “find unity between our countries”. Casós, meanwhile, tried to defend herself via the not-so-subtle art of passive/aggressiveness:

“I don’t want to criticize Leysi’s choice but it’s something I would not have done. I have nothing against her but what I did was absolutely different. I was in a high fashion show and I didn’t sit on a flag draped on top of a horse.” [Ed. personal translation]

Anyone care to bet that by year’s end Suarez and Casós will be sharing a cell in a Limeño prison?

Image- Living in Peru

Sources (English)- Living in Peru, BBC News, The Press Association

Sources (Spanish)- Agencia Orbita de Peru, RPP Noticias

Daily Headlines: June 26, 2008

* Brazil: According to Merrill Lynch there are more millionaires in Brazil than in any other Latin American country.

* Mexico: First it was people crossing the border into Mexico in ordered to buy cheap gasoline. Now it’s Texan real estate firms trying to beat the housing slump by selling property to Mexicans.

* U.S.: Police in a South Carolina town are investigating who set fire to a Puerto Rican flag that hung off a private house.

* Cuba: The country’s first ever Gay Pride parade was abruptly canceled after it did not receive the green light from the island’s government.

Image- New York Times (“Inside the Daslu department store in São Paulo, Brazil, where the wealthy gather to mingle and consume.”)

Sources- GreenvilleOnline.com, Queerty, People’s Daily Online, Bloomberg, The Latin Americanist