Dolce & Gabbana Products Taken Off China’s E-Commerce Sites as Celebrities Boycott Brand

November 26, 2018

Dolce & Gabbana’s founders have released an apology video to their Chinese customers on Friday to address the controversy sparked by the fashion brand’s racially offensive posts last week.

In its “DG Loves China” marketing campaign, the company portrayed an Asian woman having trouble trying to eat a pizza, cannoli and spaghetti with chopsticks.

Co-founder Stefano Gabbana then escalated the scandal after he responded to criticism from Chinese netizens on Instagram, allegedly writing “the country of [shit] is China” and “China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia.”

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana expressed their apology via a Chinese-subtitled video on popular social media site Weibo.

“Our families always taught us to respect different cultures across the world and because of this we want to ask for your forgiveness if we have made mistakes in interpreting yours,” Dolce said in Italian.

“We want to say sorry to all Chinese across the world, of which there are many, and we are taking this apology and message very seriously,” Gabbana further noted.

The video, which was released after Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Suning, Taobao and JD.com began removing Dolce & Gabbana products, is the company’s second apology as it had already issued a written apology on Weibo earlier last week.

Dolce & Gabbana’s first apology came after Chinese celebrities announced they were boycotting the brand’s fashion show in Shanghai.

According to online store Suning.com, they also decided to remove all Dolce & Gabbana products following the incident.

In response to the apology video, many Chinese netizens pointed out how the pair conveniently avoided mentioning what they were apologizing for specifically.

“They keep saying about this cultural difference thing, but never mention the racist comment which was not a result of cultural misunderstanding!” one commenter wrote.

“The key point that irritated the Chinese people was that u said those insulting words about the whole nation of China and found a ridiculous excuse of being hacked. Seriously after several days the apology finally came out insincerely like this? Nothing about the insulting words was even mentioned in your video,” another netizen chimed in.

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