This past International Women’s Day I received a spam e-mail from a craft company. They urged me to spend 15 hours “Making Women who Made History” by crocheting a doll honoring a famous woman. And who might I be able to immortalize via a $75 crochet kit? First up, Emmeline Pankhurst. I know who will be second. Bingo. Here she is; Frida Kahlo, complete with folk skirt, beetling brows and gold chain. For an extra $90, the company will throw in a Queen Elizabeth II kit.
This, then, is the present status of Kahlo. On a par with our former monarch and only just behind Votes for Women. This is only the beginning. So valuable is the Kahlo name and brand that only last week the Frida Kahlo Corporation, which owns many trademarks associated with Kahlo, fired a legal threat across the bows of online merchants for unauthorized use of imagery. Although the artist herself was a staunch anti-capitalist, her image is now a valuable commodity, worth millions. Meanwhile, a vast immersive biographical exhibition is under way in Berlin, and this autumn will move, with great fanfare, to the Grand Palais in Paris.
