Chinese e-commerce sites remove Dolce & Gabbana products after anti-China slur by company founder
- D&G said the Instagram accounts of the company and Stefano Gabbana had been hacked and its legal team was ‘urgently investigating’
China’s biggest e-commerce platforms including Tmall, JD.com, Xiaohongshu and Secco removed Dolce & Gabbana products from their sites after its founder Stefano Gabbana said in a conversation on his Instagram account that China was a “country of sh*t”.
Gabbana’s comment, labelled a “racist outburst” by Chinese netizens, came in response to complaints that the fashion house’s DG Loves China video campaign was itself racist for showing a Chinese woman in a red D&G dress trying to use chopsticks to eat pizza, spaghetti and a giant version of the Italian pastry cannoli.
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Gabbana's Instagram conversation quickly spread on Chinese microblogging site Weibo where many Chinese celebrities, including actress Zhang Ziyi, actor Chen Kun and singer Karry Wang Junkai, announced they would not attend the D&G fashion show scheduled in Shanghai on Wednesday night.
D&G said on Instagram that the accounts of D&G and Stefano Gabbana had been hacked and its legal team was “urgently investigating”.
However, that statement did not convince the Chinese. After the group boycott from celebrities and models, the Italian fashion brand cancelled its fashion show at the last-minute.
“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 life,” D&G said on Instagram on Wednesday.