Dolce Gabbana Mbs

[Emigdio Binet]

Inmid-November, Dolce & Gabbana, the Italian luxury fashion brand, launched three short videos on the Chinese social media network Weibo to promote its upcoming Shanghai runway extravaganza, dubbed "The Great Show," on Nov. 21.

The male voice proceeds to mansplain how to "properly" eat the dishes. "Is it too big for you?" mocks the voiceover when the woman doesn't know what to do with the gigantic cannoli. "Let's use these small stick-like things to eat our great pizza margherita," he instructs in another video.

The drama was not over yet, though. Just hours before the show, a fashion blogger shared a screenshot of an alleged chat between designer Stefano Gabbana and an Instagram user in which designer Gabbana appeared to call China a "country of [five poop emojis]" and "ignorant dirty smelling mafia."

The screenshot went viral in China, along with the trending hashtag #boycottdolce. Within two hours, hundreds of Chinese actors and models who were to walk the runway that evening had withdrawn. D&G's Chinese brand ambassador, boy band star Wang Junkai, terminated his deal with D&G.

Xinhua News Agency, China's state-run media outlet, asked foreign brands to respect the Chinese market. Chinese people in Italy appeared at the brand's flagship shop in Milan, protesting and demanding refunds. China's e-commerce giants, Alibaba and JD.com, removed D&G products from their online stores. Hong Kong retailer Lane Crawford also halted the sale of D&G goods, both in stores and online, after customers started returning them.

Although China is the wounded party this time, the nation often turns a blind eye to racism. Some Chinese people call those with African heritage "hei gui" ("black ghost") and label Indians "a san" ("the third"), a derogatory term in the Shanghai dialect.

In 2016, a Chinese detergent commercial featured a black man being thrown into washing machine and emerging as a Chinese man with fair skin. This met little resistance from the Chinese audience when it aired, and when foreign media outlets criticized the ad, the company was defensive. In the end, however, the controversial commercial was pulled.

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