Dolce and Gabbana's founders issued an apology to China after uproar over its controversial ad campaign. Chinese shopping websites removed the Italian brand's product and the Chinese are campaigning to boycott the luxurious brand.
The fashion brand was criticized after they aired a racist and insensitive video campaign. The issue was also provoked by viral messages from its co-founder Stefano Gabbana's Instagram account.
Yangmatou, a cross-border e-commerce site, announced last Wednesday that they have taken out 58,000 D&G products from their shopping website. The website said that "the motherland is more important than anything else". Also, searches for the brand in both Chinese and English in online shopping sites including Alibaba, JD.com, and NetEase's Kaola returned no results for D&G products.
It is feared that the brand might lose the Chinese market. Chinese consumers, according to reports, spent around $100 billion on high-end products last year. The brand was forced to postpone its scheduled fashion runway show in Shanghai after celebrities declined to attend the event and models backed out. According to a commentary on the WeChat account of the People's Daily, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a cancellation notice for the event. It is also stated that the commentary is warning that if one is not willing to understand China, eventually it will the Chinese market and the benefits arising from China's growth.
The founders of the company released an apology on Friday through a video. Dolce said that the company has always been in love with China. He added that they love China's culture and they certainly have much to learn. He said that they are sorry if they made mistakes in the way they expressed themselves.
Gabbana said that they will never forget the experience and it will certainly never happen again. He added that from the bottom of their hearts, they are asking for forgiveness.
The scandalous commercial featured a Chinese woman trying to eat a cannoli with chopsticks. She struggles to eat the cannoli and a narrator asked: "Is it too big for you?" It was criticized to be racist. The clips first appeared on Weibo and it was deleted after criticisms spread on social media.
The controversy was inflamed after messages from Gabbana's Instagram publicly circulated that says that the controversial videos were posted by his will and he is complaining about "China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia. The co-founder claimed that his Instagram account was hacked.
