Where is the limit of racial discrimination? Why is the fashion industry one after another?

As the social influence of fashion brands becomes more and more common, the impact of the “racial discrimination” incident has become more and more serious.

Classification of “racial discrimination”

It is roughly divided into two aspects: the designer's racist speech and the brand's products are suspected of discrimination. Among them, the nature can be subdivided into obvious malice and lack of understanding of cultural diversity. Of course, the brand will deny the triple "I am not, I have not, Don't talk about it, the brand's simple crisis public relations skills can't fool people who have gradually improved their recognition. Of course, there are some remarks that consumers think they are too sensitive.

The representative of the racist speech of the designer brings more serious consequences to the discriminating Jewish race of former Dior designer John Galliano and the abuse of Dolce & Gabbana last year. The designer was expelled from the founder of the non-frozen, and for the Dolce & Gabbana brand, one of the founders, perhaps no way to dismiss someone's designers, the brand is leading to boycott Chinese market and is off the shelf in most electronic business platform.

In 2011, former Dior designer John Galliano was suspected of discriminating against Jewish people after drinking and shouted "I love Hitler" and was dismissed by Dior and sentenced to a fine of $8421. From being known as a ghost designer to disappearing in the fashion world for many years, the most ironic thing is that he started his high-profile debut with the inspiration of African tribes. Not only that, he likes the extraction of artistic elements from non-Western countries. It is in the rhetoric of racial discrimination.

In recent years, the face design of the collaboration with Benjamin Shine has been re-emerged. It is still very amazing. If he does not have racial discrimination, he does not know how many classic fashions can be brought to us. Although it is a pity, it also needs to bear the wrong things. responsibility.

In addition to the “discriminatory remarks” of designers of luxury brands, luxury brands have more “step-on” ratios, such as Dolce & Gabbana and Philipp Plein’s insults; recent black discrimination: Gucci’s black high collar The sweater "Balaclava", the black-brimmed sweater that is stretched to the model's face, the red lip-shaped gap in the mouth, is considered by the netizens to reflect the black facial features, and the "red-lipped chimpanzee" doll of Prada's Pradamalia series earlier.

Some critics said: If Dolce & Gabbana insulted China event the brand lost a third of global sales contribution of Chinese consumers, the Prada and Gucci has shaken the foundation of another group of potential customer base, continued large black consumer.

Definition of "racial discrimination"

For the voices suspected of “racial discrimination”, it may be possible to give them a textbook-style answer: all stereotypes about race and group, that is, the inherent framework of obliterating individuality, are “racial discrimination”. Not to mention literal abusive and metaphorical satire.

In the past few years, Dior and the photographer Shi Xiaofan jointly launched the "Shanghai Old Dreams" series, which is a very obvious example of obscuring personalization (knocking on the blackboard): wearing a fashionable white model standing among the identical Chinese "replica" people, approved The Chinese 衽 with repeated faces is a mass without personality, while Dior and the West represent personalization.

It is worth noting that the photographer stated in the subsequent clarification that these Chinese models are not just people, but symbolize the Chinese history from the 1960s to the 1980s. Jenny Zhang, a fashion columnist for the British newspaper, has commented on the words "Chinese people are like Mao Zedong's robots? Thanks, Dior". "The current Dior Chinese customers will not get approval from these photos."

The stereotypes of race and groups, such as Dolce & Gabbana ad some time ago and recently Zara's. Of course, you need to talk about the "face".

Both models are not the popular red face of the cone subnet, but the obvious oriental face. In large part because Dolce & Gabbana models are Tucao the video, the eye is not small models are disguised as a "squint" read between the lines and abandon chopsticks culture. Eyes This is an inherently discriminatory image imposed on the Asian race by the West. Before Gigi was also boycotted by the blink of an eye on the ins, China also refused to sign her Visa show.

But Zara's situation is a bit different. Most of the people in the comments also think that it is not abusive, which has led to a discussion about whether the word insult can not be used indiscriminately. The model chosen is Li Jingwen of the Top 50 in the world. She did not deliberately smear the model, but showed the real side, retaining the freckles of her characteristic meaning. This is also the personality characteristic of foreign brands that never evade. The opponents think that she can not represent the Chinese face. .

Perhaps it is not the face that is now "beautified" by the beauty cameras, but the truth must be a kind of beauty, not to mention the many styles of Miss Sister are very good.

The "blackface" incident shared by Gucci and Prada is deeply related to the colonial history of the Americas. The stereotype that has been shaped into a black-faced red lips and low intelligence, rooted in the American subconscious by the "tune-up" of pop culture, is the painful shackles of the black race that struggled to break free in the 150 years.

These main reasons are ridicule or "truth" based on "inherently discriminating image", which is a wake-up memory brought about by symbolic meaning. Even if it is considered to be entertainment and ridicule, in fact, as long as the group that is discriminated against believes that it has been harmed, no matter how others prove that the allegations are unreasonable, the fact of discrimination already exists. And there is no excuse or apology to eliminate this insult.

Why is "racial discrimination" frequent?

The Washington Post article commented that when it comes to race, ethnicity, and diversity, the ability of the fashion industry to create chaos and anger seems to have no bottom line. Even as companies become more global and international, their ability to learn from their mistakes remains limited.

On the one hand, the root cause of the brand’s know-how and mistakes is that the amount of information is too large and fast in the information age. For China, the sense of national justice cannot support such a long time of attention. In the case of an alternative luxury brand, it is of little significance to resist the purchase; although the Chinese market is indeed more and more important, it has also been commented by foreign media that luxury goods cannot rely too much on the Chinese market, but we cannot use the purchasing power to “threaten” the brand to apologize. A so-called apology is not sincere, because there is no actual change.

Secondly, the racial discrimination that is obvious to some groups is not particularly discriminated by other groups that are easily discriminated against. What is more, in the case of insulting China, some people think that it is too big for the "Little Pinks". Because of ignorance or autism, they are unwilling to understand and cannot understand each other, and even have a mentality of the weak and hostile.

Why do brands frequently “make death” events, because the previous events did not cause much loss to them, and the stereotypes generated were actually more likely to be creative inspiration and resonate with them, and for the main market of the brand, the offense was offended. More cost-effective.

How to deal with fashion brands at this stage

As fashion companies become more and more international, their products can reach a wide range of audiences, but these brands still have difficulty understanding the customs and emotions of the countries in which they operate. These companies have their public relations offices around the world, but they have few safeguards to ensure a deep understanding of each market.

But with the failure of crisis public relations, even luxury brands have to face the consequences of offending the white economy. After the alleged "racial discrimination" scandal, Gucci announced a number of initiatives to promote corporate culture diversity. Prada also announced the establishment of the "Diversity and Inclusion Committee" in order to solve the problem and the fashion industry including Gucci, H&M and other brands are in the face The crisis of “brand suspicion of racial discrimination” caused by cultural appropriation.

The purpose of our problem is not to “make up” a brand, but to make the brand face these problems through our own efforts. Before the identity of brand consumers and investors, we are first Chinese, black or Jewish. Gucci represents the young luxury brands, the continuous growth is inseparable from the consumption promotion of young people, so the influence brought by such events began to spread further.

Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri said the incident was a wake-up call to accelerate Gucci's diversified and inclusive initiatives. Gucci has started a scholarship program in several cities around the world including New York, Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul, in order to train the design team to cultivate talents with a global cultural perspective. At the same time, Gucci has been in the midst of a new round of recruitment around the design team, hoping to maximize the diversity of team members in the most time.

When luxury goods are transformed from high to fashion, it has long been more than just creativity and design, but a global business that requires consumers to pay. Most luxury brands come from Europe, but their influence on the luxury goods market in Western Europe is gradually weakening. The main market that really supports the brand finance is the emerging markets in Asia and America that the brand is not familiar with.

These comprehensive factors determine that the fashion industry must pay attention to racial issues, manifested as a crisis of luxury goods public relations from "hacking" to an apology and the establishment of relevant departments, whether it is serious discrimination or cultural understanding bias, is gradually emerging from historical factors to us In front of us, and we are going to use our own rapid development to completely solve this problem.