Dolce & Gabbana pulled the plug on a fashion show in Shanghai just hours before it was supposed to start, on account of a series of racist promotional videos that somehow materialized on the label’s social media accounts.
The issue stemmed from three 40-second spots posted across the company’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, featuring an Asian model attempting to eat various Italian foods with chopsticks. Accompanying the visual was a man’s voice making sophomoric jokes about “penetrating” a cannoli with chopsticks, asking it’s “too huge” and other predictably similar idiocy.
The videos were posted a week ago, prompting a number of celebrity attendants to drop out of the show and urging others to do the same. But it wasn’t until the last minute that the company posted an apology and insisted that it had been hacked:
Stefano Gabbana is also blaming the hackers for a direct message allegedly sent to model Michaela Tranova, which among other things includes the phrase “China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia.” Gabbana posted a screengrab insisting the message was “not him,” which would probably be more convincing if the designers weren’t accused of being racially insensitive on a regular basis.
The thin apology didn’t really do it for many people, including Chinese-French model Estelle Wong, who called the spots “disrespectful and racist.”
“You don’t love China, you love money,” she wrote.