Dolce & Gabbana have found themselves in a predicament after racist comments have surfaced on social media. It is not the first of Stefano Gabbana’s most controversial statements, but it is possibly one of the costliest. That’s only to be expected upon insulting an entire country with a burgeoning luxury market. In this case, the country is China.
In anticipation of its “The Great Show” in Shanghai, D&G released a series of ads on the label’s social media accounts that many took to be offensive. They featured a Chinese woman struggling to eat Italian cuisine with chopsticks, while accompanied by a stereotypical Chinese soundtrack and backdrop, suggesting a dated perception of the country that has quickly raced to become among the world’s top economies in the past decades. The narration made in Mandarin was culturally insensitive, making sexual innuendos and implying that China is a backward country in comparison to Italy. These spread like wildfire on China’s top social media platform, Weibo, where the label was forced to delete the ads.
It seems that the brand has not learned from another blunder it committed last year for its ad campaigns in Beijing that decided to do away with the capital’s more modern parts. Chinese netizens have not been shy to voice out that the photos seemed out of touch with the present China, presenting the country as left in time and underdeveloped. The feedback caused the label to pull these out immediately as well. Unfortunately for D&G, the story does not end there.
A few hours away from #DGTheGreatShow, Stefano Gabbana’s conversations were leaked on Instagram, expressing racist comments towards the Chinese. Online fashion watchdog Diet Prada shared to its hundreds of thousands of followers incriminating statements from the designer who was reacting at the pull out of the #DGLovesChina ads. “Dieter” and model Michaela Tranova sent screenshots to Diet Prada of her exchange with Gabbana, which had him stating insults on China and not realizing the racist undertones of the ads they had to delete.
The reaction was quick, thanks to the Internet—celebs such as Zhang Ziyi and Li Bingbing said they would not be attending the event, the former even stating that she will no longer buy D&G products, contracts were terminated, models refused to participate and agencies pulled out talents scheduled to walk—that D&G had to cancel its multimillion show in China. There were reports that the government pressured the label, but this so far remains unverified. Besides the outrage expressed by Chinese netizens, Chinese retailers have also dropped their D&G merchandize. Lane Crawford, based in Hong Kong, has done the same and so did YOOX/Net-A-Porter.
Gabbana did not claim responsibility for the messages, saying instead that his account was hacked and that their legal office is investigating the matter. The duo later released an apology through a video, that others have found to be lacking in sincerity. They stated, “We’ve always been very crazy about China, we’ve visited it a lot. We’ve been to many cities. We love your culture,” even ending the clip with saying sorry in Mandarin. But the damage has been done, and the gaffe can potentially cause D&G to lose a lot on the market that many brands are trying hard to enter.
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Image credits: Jacopo Raule via Getty Images, Dolce & Gabbana
