A woman in a blood-red sequin dress sits in front of a cartwheel-sized pizza Margherita. She wears an elaborate necklace around her neck and huge earrings in the shape of a heart dangle from her ears. She tries to get hold of the pizza with chopsticks, patters around a bit, smiles and then manages to bring a piece to her mouth.
Hard to say what message the fashion house Dolce & Gabbana wanted to convey with this and two other clips from their campaign "DG Loves China". In the run-up to a show in Shanghai in November, the promotion had been launched - and it can be said that it went thoroughly wrong.
The fashion house was blamed for allegations of racist stereotypes on the clip, forced to cancel the show and apologize. When chats then appeared on the company's Instagram account, where derogatory comments were made about China, the PR crisis was perfect.
Gabbana and his partner Domenico Dolce apologized via video, explained that their accounts had been hacked - but many celebrities had already jumped there and had joined the boycott of the brand.
Now, the Chinese model Zuo Ye has apologized for her appearance in the spot of the Italian fashion house. She would never do anything that could offend her homeland, she wrote, according to "South China Morning Post" on her account at the social network "Weibo". "I love my country and I'm proud to represent China on the catwalk," she added. She had not given enough thought to the consequences of her actions and now feels "very guilty".
However, she also had no control over the content of the promotional clip, Zuo Ye emphasized. She felt uncomfortable with the three-hour filming of the clip. It had been difficult to handle the huge portions of pasta and pizza with the chopsticks.
Her career was "almost completely ruined" by the massive criticism of the campaign. Zuo reported that she had been attacked on social media and received death threats. But the scandal also has a learning effect: "I will grow in the experience and better represent the character of the Chinese people."
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As @dolcegabbana prepares to mount her next runway show in Shanghai this coming evening (7:30 PM) and the rest of Instagram over what's sure to be an overly lavish "love letter" to China, we'll be wondering if we'll see chopsticks as hair ornaments, take-out boxes as purses, or even kimonos misappropriated as Chinese costume. Time wants tell. For now, we'll let y'all simmer on this DM between Stefano and Dieter @michaelatranova (chronology is reversed in slides). Word has it that they're silent in the process of model casting (over 200 asian girls scheduled) ... would not let them walk the show if they were their agents lol. So, curious what the Chinese government wants to do in a country. • #DGTheGreatShow #DGlovesChina #runway #fashionshow #cancelled #racism #dolceandgabbana #altamoda #rtw #dgmillennials #stefanogabbana #shanghai #chinese #china #wtf #dumb #lame #asianmodel #asian #dietprada
A post shared by Diet Prada ™ (@diet_prada) on Nov 20, 2018 at 7:05 PST