Fashion systemic injustice – Dolce and Gabbana.
In this D&G Chinese advertisement video, one Asian woman is using chopsticks to eat some Italian food, whose facial expression is orotund and makes the audience feel embarrassing. This video features the woman is struggling with utilizing chopsticks, showing her dumbness and stupidness. As a “Chinese woman embraces European fashion”, she is “too uneducated to understand European culture”. After it was released on Chinese social media platforms and Instagram, Chinese people felt offended and became furious because the advertisement expressed cultural ignorance and disrespect to China. The ad with racism leads Chinese people to boycott the brand and asked them to apologize. However, Stefano Gabbana, one of the founders of D&G, did not only refuse to admit that he insulted China but also denounced the model in comments, accusing her of “eating dogs” and calling her “China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia”. After this racist event, the luxury fashion show was canceled in Shanghai, which resulted in the loss of thousands of dollars to the brand and some companies in China
As a Chinese international student, I truly felt offended by D&G. Chopsticks, a symbol of Chinese culture, are used inappropriately. This racist advertisement brought a large negative effect on the image of Chinese people. It would mislead and give people from different cultural backgrounds a bad impression. In fact, they might wonder if Chinese people are so uneducated that they eat food stupidly. Further, Chinese culture could be questioned that Chinese people are laughed by using chopsticks.
This racist event reminds me that it is a systemic injustice that is disrespectful to exotic cultures. Fashion houses create fashion products to make money in a larger market without understanding and about a different culture. It is not fair for other countries or other races that their great culture is disrespectfully used as a stunt. Fashion brands make their effort to make money from consumers, but they do not even know the essence of culture, who simply design something contain superficial elements of clothes from different races without respect. If no objection to this phenomenon, the systemic injustice will continue, which more people from different cultural backgrounds will be treated unequally and be insulted.
Image from: https://www.pinkvilla.com/files/styles/contentpreview/public/Chats.jpg?itok=jMXsV7Q6