🎙️The Ensemble, Valentine's Day Edition: Winter Olympics Can't Avoid Politics, Epstein Fallout Rolls On, and Iran's Women Voices Heard in California Film Festival
The world always looks slightly different from CA - we're time-shifting Prime Time Winter Olympics and rolling news coverage, and enjoying the sunshine.
Feeling all the love today for you our loyal subscribers! H2H is working from the ‘LA bureau’ this week, high in the canyons above Beverly Hills, where I last lived in 2019 before lockdown when I was teaching public diplomacy at UCLA. This week we’ve been showing our Iran documentary ‘That Night’ at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Of course the rare occasion it decides to monsoon here, it happens to be during the red carpet interviews for our film. The dress served however, in look and lore. As is the H2H sartorial storytelling way, it helped us introduce our film. I became aware of the designer - Jila Saber - thanks to a story by Christian Allaire for Vogue when she made waves on the red carpet in 2023 with her ‘noose dress’ dress design for Iranian model Mahlagha Jaberi at Cannes to protest executions in Iran. Created during the Mahsa Amini movement as a tribute to the women of Iran silenced, oppressed, and even killed for the simple act of showing their hair, this stark black-and-white piece channels a nation’s grief through expressionless faces and an absence of hair that symbolizes the enforced loss of identity and freedom. It’s also the animation style of our film; a fated match.
I was then delighted to join Katie Pavlich on her new show at NewsNation to discuss the film.
The stories of the women held in Evin prison just for refusing to wear hijab are more important now than ever: they laid the groundwork for the revolution we’re seeing today. I told NewsNation: ‘The Iranian people believed President Trump when he said help is on the way’. They now expect him to deliver - and today’s signs at the Global Day of Action rally in front of Los Angeles City Hall said as much. LAPD estimated over 300,000 people showed up.
Walking through my old professorial stomping grounds of UCLA yesterday I passed the headquarters of Wasserman - the latest organisation wrestling with damaging evidence from the Epstein files (see below), and the repercussions continue for leaders from the UAE (where the head of Dubai based ports giant had to quit), the British Royal Family and here in Hollywood.
Wishing all our readers a Happy Valentine’s Day - we could use some more love in the world right now. We have Lunar New Year (won’t be sad to see the other side of the year of the Snake!), Lent and Ramadan coming up in the next few weeks so a much-needed time for family and reflection for a large chunk of the world’s population.
The Pink Pony Club Moves On
Chappell Roan has never been an artist who shies away from a hard truth, and this week she made one of her clearest statements yet. After her dress generated controversy at last week’s Grammy Awards, the 27‑year‑old singer announced she is leaving Wasserman, the major talent agency led by Casey Wasserman, after emails between Wasserman and Ghislaine Maxwell surfaced in the recently released Epstein files.
Roan didn’t reference the documents directly, but her message was unmistakable. In a statement shared on social media, she said she holds her team “to the highest standards” and feels “a duty to protect them” as well as herself. “No artist, agent or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values,” she wrote, adding that she refuses to “passively stand by”. Artists, she said, “deserve representation that aligns with their values and supports their safety and dignity”.
Her departure lands at a sensitive moment for Wasserman. The newly unsealed files include flirtatious email exchanges between him and Maxwell dating back to 2003, when he was married. Wasserman has since apologised, saying he “deeply regrets” the correspondence and stressing he had no personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, though he did take part in a “humanitarian trip” on Epstein’s plane.
Roan is a pioneering force in contemporary feminism, she scolded a Paparazzi for acting aggressively towards her during the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards and she regularly uses her platform to address parasocial relationships.
No wrongdoing is alleged against him, but Roan’s decision underscores a shifting cultural expectation: that representation is not just about career strategy, but about trust. And trust, in 2026, is something artists are no longer willing to compromise.
Paper Trails & Private Jets: What the New Epstein Trove Reveals About Global Power Playbooks
But it’s not just Wasserman that has been disgraced in the latest tranche of Epstein files. There have been many disturbing revelations that have sent tremors through diplomatic corridors across Europe and the world. More than three million pages of documents, released by the US Justice Department, have exposed long‑standing social ties between Jeffrey Epstein and a roster of political, diplomatic, and royal figures… even the Dalai Lama was named dozens of times. While the documents do not allege new criminal wrongdoing against these individuals, the reputational damage has been swift and severe.
Across Europe, the fallout has been particularly sharp. Multiple countries have seen senior diplomats, ministers, and advisers resign after their names appeared in the files, often linked to meetings or correspondence with Epstein long after his 2008 conviction. In total, at least 15 high‑ranking figures across 10 countries have stepped down, with probes now examining the conduct of more than 80 public officials.
The diplomatic consequences are already visible. Governments are scrambling to distance themselves from implicated officials, while foreign ministries quietly reassess which envoys can credibly represent them abroad. Analysts note that parliamentary democracies in Europe have moved faster than the United States in demanding accountability from public figures tied to Epstein’s network.
The UK has taken a considerable hit, with pressure mounting on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to resign after evidence shows that he was aware of Peter Mendelson’s close relationship with Epstein before appointing him as US ambassador.
Sir Keir has maintained he was unaware of the “depth” of Lord Mendelson’s relationship with Epstein before he appointed him to run the British embassy in Washington, but on Monday Scotland’s Labour Party leader Anas Sarwar called for the Prime Minister’s resignation, causing a deep rift within the Labour Party.
Meanwhile, US lawmakers granted access to unredacted files say the documents shed new light on Epstein’s political reach and the individuals who maintained contact with him even after his conviction.
The result is a widening diplomatic chill: ambassadors recalled, alliances strained, and governments forced to answer uncomfortable questions about who they trusted, and why, long after the world knew who Epstein was.
The Bad Bunny Bowl
Chappell Roan isn’t the only celebrity speaking out this week, as Bad Bunny transformed the Super Bowl from a game into a referendum, begging the question: who gets to define America. In head‑to‑toe cream Zara, no less the singer delivered a halftime show that doubled as a love letter to Puerto Rico and a masterclass in cultural soft power.
His 14‑minute performance unfolded like a moving postcard from the archipelago: sugarcane fields, nail salons, bars, and the now‑iconic casita filled with celebrity guests from Pedro Pascal to Cardi B. Lady Gaga arrived in a pleated Luar dress adorned with a red hibiscus, while Ricky Martin’s cameo underscored the show’s insistence on cultural memory and pride. Even Bunny’s jersey, emblazoned with “Ocasio” and the number 64, carried layered meaning, nodding to both family and Puerto Rico’s contested hurricane death toll.
But the fashion was only half the story. Bunny became the first artist to perform an entire Super Bowl set in Spanish, punctuating it with a single English line, “God bless America”, before naming nations across the Americas as dancers raised their flags. A billboard behind him declared: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love”, a nod to his acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards last week.
Predictably, conservative backlash arrived within minutes. President Trump dismissed the show as “terrible,” while Turning Point USA staged an “All‑American Halftime Show” in protest. Yet the criticism only highlighted what Bunny made impossible to ignore: Latin culture isn’t a guest at America’s biggest sporting event anymore. It’s the main act - and it’s dressing the part.
When Fashion Becomes a Fault Line: The Winter Olympics Helmet That Sparked a Global Debate
The Winter Olympics are usually a parade of engineered fabrics and national colours. Fashion that is functional, patriotic, and rarely political. But this year, a single helmet turned the slopes into a diplomatic flashpoint.
Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych arrived at the start line wearing a helmet painted with 24 images of athletes that have been killed since Russia’s invasion. Within hours, Olympic officials banned him from competing unless he swapped it for a neutral design arguing that his “helmet of remembrance: violated rules which prevent political statements while athletes are competing.
“It’s hard to say or put into words. It’s emptiness,” said Heraskevych in response to the ban. “It really looks like discrimination because many athletes already were expressing themselves,” he added.
The ruling ignited immediate backlash. Ukrainian officials called it “a censorship of lived reality,” while athletes from several delegations privately questioned why a helmet honouring civilian suffering was deemed more controversial than the militaristic motifs that have quietly appeared in past Games. The IOC insisted the decision was purely about maintaining political neutrality — a phrase that has rarely felt more fragile.
Fashion, meanwhile, has been having its own Olympic moment. This year’s kits — from Italy’s sculptural Armani outerwear to Canada’s hyper‑technical Hudson Bay layers — have leaned into identity as much as performance. Designers talk about “storytelling,” “heritage,” and “visibility.” But the Ukrainian helmet exposed the limits of that narrative. Storytelling is welcome, it seems, until the story becomes uncomfortable.
On the ice and in the mixed zone, athletes whispered what officials would not say aloud: the ban wasn’t about fashion, or even rules. It was about who gets to decide which identities are acceptable on the world’s biggest stage — and which ones are too politically inconvenient to be seen.
To end on an Olympics x Valentines note: how do we feel about the Norweigan self professed cheating biathlete? Not in sport but in love. He used his medal platform to express remorse to his girlfriend on the world’s stage and the internet had thoughts, but we want to hear yours. Drop a comment. Can’t help but wonder if he’d be winning better than bronze under different circumstances?