Dolce & Gabbana vs China: here is what happened

In these hours to "break" the Internet is just news: the controversy between Dolce & Gabbana and China. The designer couple was preparing for a show-event at the Shanghai Expo. Everything was ready for Wednesday, November 21st. There was the location, there were the models, the guests and more than 500 clothes. Then, suddenly, everything is gone. Went to the sound of post Instagram and poisonous comments. How? Let's go back a few days.

Saturday Dolce & Gabbana posted on the Weibo platform, a sort of Chinese Twitter, three promotional videos with the hashtags #DGLovesChina and #DGTheGreatShow. In the pictures we see a young oriental woman who, awkward, eats pizza, spaghetti and a Sicilian cannoli with traditional chopsticks, while, off the field, a male voice gives her advice on how to approach those Italian dishes. Immediately a host of indignant, led by Diet Prada, bubble the advertising operation as "offensive", to spread "a parodic vision of what modern China is not ... a gag for fun" thanks to the stereotypical aspect of the chosen protagonist, a model with small almond eyes and a naive smile and, above all, thanks to a series of squalid allusions, full of sexist double meanings like "It's still too big for you, is not it?".

On the fashion house falls a shower of negative comments and the hashtag #BoycottDolce becomes a trend, forcing the Italian brand to remove all the videos from Weibo. Problem solved? No, because to reinvigorate the controversy comes from the official IG profile of Stefano Gabbana, often the protagonist of bitter quarrel (remember when he called Selena Gomez "ugly"), a conversation in which the designer offends China and its population and in a contemptuous way and to the sound of "pupù" emoticons. Immediately local celebrities such as actresses Zhang Ziyi and Li Bingbing or singer Wang Junkai say they do not want to attend the show; the China Bentley Modeling agency refuses to let its models work and, according to rumors, the political pressures are so strong that only one decision remains: cancel the show.

To placate the minds, now decidedly fiery, not even the latest announcement by Dolce & Gabbana that declare that their accounts have been hacked and swear to have only enormous respect for the country that would host the one as one of the most innovative and luxurious of all time.

Now the damage is done. The hashtag #BoycottDolce continues on the web, the company's reputation is affected and there are big negative repercussions for the brand that in the state has 25 stores and dreamed of conquering a large share of the luxury market of the Dragon that seems to be worth about 72 billion dollars, equal to almost a third of the value that the sector records at a global level, according to a report by McKinsey in 2017. Will Dolce & Gabbana recover? And their misadventure will have repercussions on China's destiny and relations with other Italian brands?