Italian luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana have apologised for any distress caused after a series of racially derogatory messages – allegedly sent from co-founder Stefano Gabbana‘s Instagram account – surfaced online. However, the brand claim their Instagram account and Gabbana’s personal account had been hacked.
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In the Instagram DM, between Gabbana and fashion writer Michaela Travona, Gabbana defends an online campaign series created in the lead up to The Great Show – a fashion event in Shanghai. The “Eating with Chopsticks” instructional videos see a Chinese woman attempt to eat over-sized Italian food with chopsticks.
The videos, still available on the label’s Instagram, was heavily criticised on Chinese social media platform Weibo and was subsequently taken down from the website within 24 hours.
According to the Guardian, Weibo users accused the fashion house of trivialising China’s culture and portraying Chinese women in a racist way. Chinese actors Zhang Ziyi and Chen Kun announced they would not be attending The Great Show while other Chinese celebrities called out the fashion house on Weibo.
Fashion commentators Diet Prada denounced the video on their Instagram writing: “Pandering at it’s finest, but taken up a notch by painting their target demographic as a tired and false stereotype of a people lacking refinement/culture to understand how to eat foreign foods and an over-the-top embellishment of cliché ambient music, comical pronunciations of foreign names/words, and Chinese subtitles (English added by us), which begs the question—who is this video actually for?”
Diet Prada followed this post with the messages between Gabbana and Travona in which the designer first appears to defend the campaign before making derogatory comments about China and Chinese people.
Travona has since reposted her conversation with Gabbana to her Instagram account.
Hours later, The Great Show was cancelled.
Taking to their Instagram account, the fashion label announced their legal team are investigating the incident.
In a separate statement Dolce and Gabbana said it was their dream to “bring to Shanghai a tribute event dedicated to China which tells our history and vision.”
“It was not simply a fashion show, but something that was created especially with love and passion for China and all the people around the world who loves Dolce & Gabbana.
“What happened today was very unfortunate not only for us, but also for all the people who worked day and night to bring this event to life.
“From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to express our gratitude to our friends and guests.”
Gabbana has since posted a screenshot of the conversation with the words “Not Me” over it.
He captioned the post: “My Instagram account has been hacked. My legal office is working on this. I love China and the Chinese Culture. I’m so sorry for what happened.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqbgvLinF1w/
