Dolce & Gabbana blew up its own runway show in Shanghai last night (November 20, 2018) thanks to a series of offensive videos and statements that caused celebrity invites and booked models to cancel their commitments, forcing the label to cancel the show.
The drama began with a series of campaign videos publicizing the event that were titled “eating with chopsticks.” One video showed a female Asian model being instructed in Mandarin, how to eat pizza, cannolo, and spaghetti by a male voice over.
The label is not new to controversy in China. In April 2017, it was harshly criticized by Chinese people for an ad that was shot on the street and paired models with working class Chinese people.
On Chinese social media channel Weibo, users complained about the sexual overtones of the video in which the narrator makes comments about the cannoli being too big to be managed by chopsticks.
Instagram page @diet_prada, which has a long-standing contentious relationship with the Italian label, wrote about the video campaign and the upcoming show. In a post featuring the controversial video, the caption read, “In a bid to further appeal to luxury’s covetable Chinese consumers, @dolcegabbanareleased some hella offensive “instructional” videos on the usage of chopsticks. Pandering at it’s finest, but taken up a notch by painting their target demographic as a tired and false stereotype of a people lacking refinement/culture to understand how to eat foreign foods and an over-the-top embellishment of cliché ambient music, comical pronunciations of foreign names/words, and Chinese subtitles (English added by us), which begs the question—who is this video actually for?”
Instagram user @michaelatranovasent reposted @dietprada’s story on Instagram Stories and tagged designer Steffano Gabbano who responded with series of offensive comments about how Chinese people were responding to the ad (which was removed from Chinese social media though remains on Twitter). Among other comments Gabbano wrote, “From now on in all the interview that I will do international I will say that the country of 💩💩💩 is China.”
The exchange was published on @dietprada and subsequently shared on Weibo where, according to WWD, VIP attendees including actress Zhang Ziyi, singer Wang Junkai, actors Li Bingbing, Chen Kun, Diliriba, and girl group Rocket Girls 101 also declared they wouldn’t attend.
Following the celebrity announcements, the Bentley Modeling agency announced the 24 models cast for the show were boycotting the event. Several models posted their Dolce & Gabbana casting images with the words “not me” scrawled over the photograph.
As well, longtime Dolce & Gabbana ambassadors actress Dilraba Dilmurat and singer Wang Junkai issued statements through their respective announced they were terminating their relationships with the brand.
With no models and no attendees and an international incident on their hands, Dolce & Gabbano canceled the show and followed with the usual plea that the brand and Gabbano’s Instagram pages had been hacked.
Gabbano is known for his combative exchanges on social media so the likelihood he wasn’t responsible for the DM exchanges is less than zero.
The brand ended the episode with a Twitter post, which read in part, “What happened today was very unfortunate not only for us, but also for all the people who worked day and night to bring this event to light.”
Check out related social media posts below, starting with the announcement that the show had been canceled.
— Dolce & Gabbana (@dolcegabbana) November 21, 2018
“What happened today was very unfortunate.”
Dolce & Gabbano claims accounts were hacked
Chinese models originally scheduled to walk the @dolcegabbana show in Shanghai pull out of program, start “Not Me” movement on Weibo, a sarcastic nod to Stefano Gabbana writing “Not Me” on Instagram post claiming he was hacked. pic.twitter.com/ATl9L1NtH7
— Trending Weibo (@TrendingWeibo) November 21, 2018
“Not Me” model posts
@michaelatranova DM exchange with Stefano Gabanna
@dietprada critique of Dolce & Gabbana ad campaign
Welcome to episode 3 with Dolce&Gabbana’s “eating with chopsticks”. We will be tackling the Italian Spaghetti al pomodoro! Now even though you think they may be similar to Chinese noodles, there is a GREAT difference in the way you eat them.#DGLovesChina#DGTheGreatShow pic.twitter.com/etzd3b31xe
— Dolce & Gabbana (@dolcegabbana) November 17, 2018
Dolce & Gabbana “Eating with Chopsticks” ad campaign
