Dolce & Gabbana feel the burn
Designer Stefano Gabbana is accused of racism and a Shanghai show is cancelled
Xiang Kai, a director and writer based in Shanghai, burned more than $20,000 (Dh73,451) worth of Dolce & Gabbana products, including coats, a vest and bags. A previous fan of the brand, he said he also threw his shoes and watches from the label in the trash.
“The purpose of burning my clothes is to awaken the Chinese people and the Chinese nation,” said Xiang, who posted photos online of his products in flames. “Some people say you’ve wasted a lot of money. I’m willing to waste this money for the nation’s dignity.”
REVOLT
He was among an untold number of people who have revolted against the Italian fashion brand that built its reputation on the ability to make Sicilian widows’ weeds sexy. Last week, the company released video clips widely seen as racist, pandering to old stereotypes (they featured a Chinese model being taught to eat spaghetti, pizza and a cannoli with chopsticks) in advance of a planned extravaganza of a show in Shanghai. Then Stefano Gabbana, a company co-founder and designer, appears to have engaged in a bout of insulting name-calling (including suggesting that the Chinese eat dogs) with a critic on Instagram. Gabbana said his account was hacked.
The dominoes begin to fall. The pigeons come home to roost. The rats abandon the sinking ship. You become a veritable paragon of cliches! And a cautionary tale. After all, in the four days since, the brand has, in no short order:
- Been forced to cancel the show;
- Been excoriated by the Chinese celebrities and models slated to walk in the show;
- Been the subject of videos of consumers burning, destroying and otherwise renouncing their Dolce products;
- Had their physical locations altered, with the label’s storefronts plastered with “Not me” posters mocking Gabbana’s response to the scandal;
- Disappeared from the site of Chinese e-tail giant Alibaba’s TMall platform as well as jd.com, secoo.com, and department store Lane Crawford, which said customers had been returning the brand’s products;
- Been excoriated in the fashion press and the fashion enthusiast communities, with particularly passionate coverage coming from fashion industry watchdog Diet Prada;
- And increasingly been abandoned by its European and American supporters, including the influencers the brand has expensively wooed over the last few years.
Net-a-Porter, the luxury e-tailer headquartered in London and owned by Richemont, has removed all Dolce products from its Chinese website.
As Angelica Cheung, editor of Vogue China, wrote in an email, “This case is a wake-up call: a 1.4 billion population is for sure a huge consumption power, but if you don’t get it right, hundreds of millions of people voicing their outrage on social media is a powerful force, hard to ignore.”
Dolce & Gabbana released three statements, first saying its accounts had been hacked, then offering words of support for the people who worked on the cancelled show and declarations of love for China. But it wasn’t until the end of the week that the founders officially apologised in a video in Mandarin. They seemed to have underestimated the importance of Chinese national identity while also overestimating their place in the wider fashion ecosystem. —
Net-a-Porter, the luxury e-tailer headquartered in London and owned by Richemont, has removed all Dolce products from its Chinese website.