i’ve been wondering as of late…
Are people fuckin CLUELESS these days?
people don’t think before they speak/act/or move it past production.
it’s mind blowing the amount of ignorance these days.
i meaaannnn….
so fashion house,
“gucci”,
is suffering from the latter.
so a sweater they were selling had black folks all kinds of offended.
it allegedly resembled blackface…
of course they discontinued and sent out an apology:
it reminds me of the sheninigans in “prada” last year.
this was in the window of their new yawk store in soho:
listen…
like,
has anyone in that production staff ever picked up a history book?
what kills me is new money folks will rush out to wear “prada” and “gucci”,
because it’s can be an extension to their dicks or self esteem,
but these comapnies show us exactly what they think of us.
i can only imagine some black attentionista wearing ^that for likes.
i guess the (ra)coons need something to make them worthy.
it’s really disheartening that two major fashion houses,
ones that i’d think exude luxury,
would be stupid enough to ever think this was okay.
ugh.
lowkey: h&m tried it two years ago and they aren’t even luxury.
it’s gonna come to the point we ain’t gonna have nowhere to shop.
One thing about it is that Italian people are quite ignorant and i’m not saying this as an insult.
I work in fashion and Italy and the Italian fashion industry are really a bubble. They are the only ones who speaks Italian and even if in Europe there’s not so much knowledge about blackface and things like that (because racism is/was manifested differently) the fact that they are Italians is quite telling.
You go to the studio of Gucci and most of the people are Italians because the designer is Italian. The same at Prada and a lot of brands. Giorgio Armani doesn’t even speak English.
When Tom Ford was at Gucci, it was different because it was more diverse, he is an American, there were black people in his team (it’s still the case). At Fendi it’s quite the same. Karl Lagereld is German, his right hand was black, he has an international studio and the same for Versace.
All of this to say that the fashion industry needs to educate people because it’s distasteful.
The worst thing about that is that there is a controversy around the world but Italians barely cares or are not that much informed about what is going on outside.
The responsible of this (the creative director or designer) can’t even participate in this if he can barely speak English.
This is pure passive-aggressive behavior. They know Black folks snap this stuff up but they want to put them (us) in their (our) places, so they produce some crap like this OR use racist symbols or appropriate non-white folks’ culture OR refuse to use Black models OR have someone on staff say something racist and then they do the ritual apology/withdrawal of the item, but they have basically let us know without doing so outright that they’ll take our money but they don’t give a damn about us or have the lowest possible opinion of us. Thing is, there are increasingly black-owned/designer-led luxury brands (Tracy Reese, Fenty, Pyer Moss, Hood By Air, Olivier Rousteing of Balmain (he just pulled blackface styled stunt, though), Public School NYC, Duro Olowu, Kara Saun, Korto Momolu, Telfar, Brooklyn Circus/Bkc, Romeo Hunte William Okpo, Azede Jean-Pierre, etc.) and more affordable brands as well, to choose from. There are also a number of Asian American and Asian designers, non-white-passing Latinx designers, etc. I’m not saying don’t ever wear white-owned luxury or mass market brands, but just keep in mind that you are nothing but a dollar to them and if you get too popular and they ain’t feeling it, the blackface/tribal/racist comment etc. will be trotted out to slap you back to reality. Or not.
They do this so racists will buy it up. Also the Black people who worship White brands only and would never give a fly Black designer a chance. It brings attention to the brand and drives up sales. They know exactly what they are doing.
Fake outrage! Black folks with money are still going to spend thousands in these brands’ stores, rappers are still going to give them free advertisement in their barely coherent songs and wear their clothes in music videos as symbols of wealth and their “come up”, and black folks with no money are going to buy knock-offs to flash wealth they don’t have. These brands know all they have to do is pull a half-assed apology out of their pasty, flat asses and…business as usual.
Anywho…