RIP D&G
If you haven't heard already, a storm has recently kicked up in the fashion industry after the luxury Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabanna caused a racism scandal, offending the Chinese culture and losing thousands and customers worldwide. The disaster occurred after the brand released a new advert featuring an Asian model eating with chopsticks, which many critics labelled 'utterly racist'. The "D&G loves China" campaign was described as incredibly offensive which lead to the cancellation of the brands upcoming fashion show in Shanghai.
Just as it seemed that the scandal couldn't quite get any worse, founder, Stefano Gabanna, was completely thrown under the bus when screenshots of an Instagram direct message conversation were released on the internet, displaying messages of Gabanna slating the Chinese culture in an extremely disrespectful way. After this, many retailers removed all D&G products from their stores and websites whilst hundreds of people joined the burn bandwagon by literally burning their D&G garments and filming it to share on social media, whilst others filmed themselves using their D&G garments to clean their toilets or create beds for their pets. Stores were attacked causing the brand to have guards protecting some stores, and thousands of customers agreed to never purchase from the brand again and unfollowed them on instagram; the brand simply lost their market in the space of a few hours.
What strikes me about this affair is how it shows that a brand can take years to build, but it only takes a matter of seconds to destroy it. After the long production process for the racist ad, it is hard to comprehend how not one person out of the many involved stepped in and stated that something wasn't right about the message they were choosing to deliver to us. For a brand as big as Dolce & Gabanna, you'd expect them to avoid such controversial topics, but clearly the people involved in the production are not educated about cultural respect enough, and especially Stefano Gabanna himself. It will be interesting to see where Dolce & Gabanna ends up in the near future after this fashion shitstorm.
Just as it seemed that the scandal couldn't quite get any worse, founder, Stefano Gabanna, was completely thrown under the bus when screenshots of an Instagram direct message conversation were released on the internet, displaying messages of Gabanna slating the Chinese culture in an extremely disrespectful way. After this, many retailers removed all D&G products from their stores and websites whilst hundreds of people joined the burn bandwagon by literally burning their D&G garments and filming it to share on social media, whilst others filmed themselves using their D&G garments to clean their toilets or create beds for their pets. Stores were attacked causing the brand to have guards protecting some stores, and thousands of customers agreed to never purchase from the brand again and unfollowed them on instagram; the brand simply lost their market in the space of a few hours.
What strikes me about this affair is how it shows that a brand can take years to build, but it only takes a matter of seconds to destroy it. After the long production process for the racist ad, it is hard to comprehend how not one person out of the many involved stepped in and stated that something wasn't right about the message they were choosing to deliver to us. For a brand as big as Dolce & Gabanna, you'd expect them to avoid such controversial topics, but clearly the people involved in the production are not educated about cultural respect enough, and especially Stefano Gabanna himself. It will be interesting to see where Dolce & Gabanna ends up in the near future after this fashion shitstorm.
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