People call for a Dolce & Gabbana boycott after racist campaign promoting Shanghai show
Dolce & Gabbana is at the centre of some controversy… again.
This time around its their new campaign thats attracting anger.
As promotion for the brands show in Shanghai today, 21 November, Dolce & Gabbana launched a social media campaign called #DGTheGreatShow. This involved videos with the tag #DGLovesChina promoted on Weibo and Instagram.
Those videos show an Asian woman struggling to eat Italian food such as pasta, pizza, and cannoli with chopsticks.
Those videos have been accused of relying on racist stereotypes, with critics pointing to the appearance of outdated cultural symbols such as lanterns, and the stereotypical styling of the model.
Jing Daily reports that Boycott Dolce has been mentioned on Weibo more than 18,000 times as a result, while on Twitter people are flocking to call the ad campaign racist.
im so disappointed in dolce and gabbana honestly,,, all these years I held them as a dream company to work with and yet this happens.. I've learnt to be proud to be chinese and we absolutely will not tolerate racists, period.
— ???? (@moonglittr) November 21, 2018
dolce gabbana is literal trash for posting a racist ad and due to blacklash claiming they were hacked. you're telling me by having an asian woman act all clueless/cute while using chopsticks to eat a canoli like dish isn't emphasizing the current westernized pov of asian women?
— Megan Yeung (@melonny3) November 21, 2018
As Diet Prada wrote: In a bid to further appeal to luxurys covetable Chinese consumers, @dolcegabbana released some hella offensive “instructional” videos on the usage of chopsticks.
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Pandering at its 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?
It attempts to target China, but instead mocks them with a parodied vision of what modern China is not…a gag for amusement.
So far, so standard backlash. But then things got even messier.
Diet Prada shared screenshots of what they claim are direct messages sent by Stefano Gabbana himself. The messages refer to China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia and ask so you are racist because you eat dogs?.
Dolce & Gabbana then claimed that their account, as well as Stefano Gabbanas, had been hacked.
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Our legal office is urgently investigating, wrote the brand on Instagram. We are very sorry for any distress caused by these unauthorized posts, comments and direct messages.
We have nothing but respect for China and the people of China.
People didnt buy it.
lol @ Dolce & Gabbana for the classic "we accidentally made some racist content but instead of apologising for it and taking responsibility we're just gonna say our account was hacked!" pic.twitter.com/SNJdtdF972
— Olly Browning (@yourolly) November 21, 2018
Rumours spread that agencies were pulling their models from the show, while influencers invited to attend announced they would be boycotting the brand.
Now Diet Prada reports that the Shanghai show has been cancelled.
More: Fashion
According to Business of Fashion, guests have been informed that the show will no longer go ahead. While Diet Prada claims this is because the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Shanghai cancelled the show, this has yet to be confirmed.
Weve reached out to Dolce & Gabbana for comment, but havent heard back. Well update this article when they release any further statement.
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