Luxury fashion brands apologize over T-shirt row
LUXURY fashion brands Coach and Givenchy have apologized for making affronts to China’s national sovereignty with Tshirts listing Hong Kong and Taiwan as separate countries.
Coach is one of the latest international companies to draw flak for listing the Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions and Taiwan as independent countries.
Yesterday, images of a 2018 Coach T-shirt that said Taiwan and Hong Kong were not part of China again provoked anger online. And the company’s official website listed Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan as options of the “Find by country” location search.
Givenchy too was outed for a similar offence: a black T-shirt that listed Taiwan and Hong Kong separately from cities in the mainland.
Coach said in a statement yesterday that the clothes with the “serious inaccuracy” had been pulled, adding it was “fully aware of the severity of this error and deeply regret it.”
“In May 2018, we found a serious inaccuracy in the design of a few T-shirts. We immediately pulled those products from all channels globally.”
The brand corrected its website as well, after Chinese users shared screenshots online showing Hong Kong in a “find by country” drop-down list.
Givenchy’s Weibo apology also reiterated its respect for China’s sovereignty, and said the brand “resolutely upholds the One China Principle.”
Super model Liu Wen has terminated her cooperation with the US fashion house.
“China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty are sacred and inviolable,” Liu said on Weibo.
She also apologized for working with Coach.
“I am sorry for the damage caused to the public for my poor choice of brand,” she said. “I love my motherland and I resolutely safeguard national sovereignty.”
Jackson Yee, a hugely popular singer in boyband TFBoys, also pulled the plug on collaborating with Givenchy.
On Sunday, Versace apologized for mistakenly listing Chinese cities as separate countries on some T-shirts.
Versace’s representative in China, actress Yang Mi, also said she would stop collaborating with the fashion house over the T-shirt incident.
International brands Asics, Calvin Klein and Fresh have also issued apologies on social media for identifying those regions as countries.
(Agencies)