Update: According to the South China Morning Post, Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce have issued a video in which they apologize to "Chinese people worldwide" for "misunderstanding Chinese culture."
“We’ve always been very crazy about China, we’ve visited it a lot. We’ve been to many cities. We love your culture.” The video ends with the designers saying the word 'sorry' in Mandarin.
The video follows widespread backlash against the duo, with protestors congregating outside the brand's stores holding signs reading the phrase 'Not Me' to show their anger.
Now, too, Net-A-Porter has dropped the brand and criticism has mounted further as high-profile Chinese celebrities have terminated contracts and denounced the pair. Can Dolce & Gabbana recover from this?
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This story was originally published on 21st November 2018.
On Wednesday, Dolce & Gabbana was forced to abruptly cancel plans for a multimillion dollar, one-hour runway show in Shanghai, China — after designer Stefano Gabbana allegedly posted racist remarks on his personal Instagram, causing China's biggest celebrities to pull out of attending the show, WWD is reporting.
Diet Prada, the fashion industry's watchdog Instagram account, caught the since-deleted posts in which Gabbana appears to say “From now on in all the interview [sp] that I will do international I will say that the country of [series of poop emojis] is China” and “China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia,” the trade paper noted.
Both Gabbana and the brand have each posted apologies on their respective accounts claiming the designer was hacked. "My Instagram account has been hacked. My legal office is working on this. I love China and the Chinese Culture. I’m so sorry for what happened," Gabbana wrote on his personal page. “Our Instagram account has been hacked. So has the account of Stefano Gabbana," the Italian fashion house posted on Wednesday. "Our legal office is urgently investigating. We are very sorry for any distress caused by these unauthorized posts. We have nothing but respect for China and the people of China."
The issue here is that the debacle stemmed from a series of social media posts teasing the runway show, in which an Asian model attempts to eat various Italian foods with a pair of chopsticks. The videos were hashtagged #DGLovesChina. According to Jing Daily, a site dedicated to reporting on China's luxury market, the videos depicted Chinese culture in an outdated and racist way. The posts drew such criticism so quickly, the fashion label deleted them from its Weibo (a Chinese social platform) but they remain on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, according to WWD.
This isn't the first time Dolce & Gabbana has come under fire for controversial opinions. Gabbana has publicly and very proudly supported Melania Trump, chastising detractors with a #Boycott T-shirt, and then there was that time the brand tried to sell a "slave sandal" for £2,395.