There might have been a chance for Dolce and Gabbana, already on such thin ice with their back to back controversies–some including comments on IVF, cashing in on hijab couture and calling Selena Gomez ugly without much prompt or explanation–if not for this latest final nail in the coffin of a reputation fast usurping even John Galliano’s (though maybe the lesson with him is, after enough time in exile, the fashion industry always forgives).
That nail being a series of Instagram-length ads featuring a Chinese woman struggling to eat Italian food with chopsticks as a means to capitalize on the burgeoning luxury market in said country. Being that the food items themselves are endlessly stereotypical in “Italianness” (e.g. pizza, cannoli), one ought to immediately take the spirit with which it was intended with a grain of salt. For again, these are Italian people, and as Stefano Gabbana himself put it to Miley Cyrus when she tried to express outrage and applause at the same time, “We are Italian and we don’t care about politics and mostly neither about the American one! We make dresses and if you think about doing politics with a post it’s simply ignorant. We don’t need your posts or comments so next time please ignore us!!” Alas, neither Miley nor anyone else has been able to ignore the “controversial” acts of D&G of late, which also includes dressing the First Lady, Melania Trump (always down to make inciting sartorial choices while claiming oblivion to them). Further proof that, no, they really don’t care about American politics. Melania, in turn, continued to show her support for the brand by re-wearing the same dress from them on Thanksgiving that she did at, of all things, an official dinner in Jerusalem in May of 2017.
And yet, some must point out that whereas Karl Lagerfeld gets to be delightfully bitchy or quintessentially queeny, Gabbana (because Dolce is utterly mute at this point) is painted as an intolerant monster instead of anyone taking into account that a man who says things like, “the country of shit is China” and “China ignorant dirty smelling mafia” is, frankly, an Italian. It ain’t all pizza and cannoli (or impromptu J. Lo performances) over there in between close-mindedness and rampant xenophobia in case you wanted to take a fucking break from your Tuscan wine tasting tour and see for yourself.
And why isn’t the girl who participated in this ad getting any flak, huh? If she was so offended by her representation as all Chinese people should be, then why didn’t she (because no agent balks at any percentage) refuse? One just has to state that there is a certain amount of culpability to be placed on everyone who participated, from the cameraperson to the makeup artist. Why don’t they get tarred and feathered as well, if we’re going to go to the extremes of talking about social responsibility and placing blame for normalizing racism? That’s where, one must admit, everybody has a price. Particularly in the fashion industry. Ah, but don’t forget the film one, too. For if this had been billed as a Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola feature (and yes, it does have certain elements of that aesthetic and vibe, not to mention both parties have dabbled in dangerous Asian territory with Isle of Dogs and Lost in Translation, respectively), it would have eked by much more effortlessly. Well, maybe not for Coppola who is a woman (therefore the devil, right?) and was only recently aware of what the Bechdel test was.
It somewhat goes to show that it is rarely the actual content of a message so much as whose megaphone the content is being delivered from. There is no question that there is nothing but degradation and reductiveness to the Dolce & Gabbana perception of the Chinese, and yet, it has to be said that it is in large part because of their name–associated with manifold racial and social faux pas that it is–that has made the backlash so strong.
Juliet once asked, “What’s in a name?” Well, when it comes to D&G’s, just about everything associated with the Trump agenda these days. This is precisely why they should have just given their idea to Anderson or Coppola and stepped back. Or maybe, turned a blind eye to profit just this once to excuse themselves from a country they clearly have no respect or sensitivity for.
As the condescending narrator puts it at one point after making a sexual innuendo about the largeness of the cannolo, “This will make you feel like you in Italy, but you are not.” To that point, the ad is also adept at making you feel like you’re in Italy for non-gustatorial reasons as well.
