Designing clothing is a tricky business in this new progressive, ultra socially-aware world we live in.
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Just ask Gucci. One minute they thought they’d created a banging new jumper that everyone would love, the next they are deleting any evidence of its existence and issuing apologies on the internet.
Apparently, the £688 (!) jumper too closely resembled ‘blackface’, in particular the red outline around the mouth which is reminiscent of golliwog imagery:
Here’s how Twitter reacted:’
Today Gucci released their Balaclava Knit Top. Sigh. Really @Gucci? Really? pic.twitter.com/ETWKFhHVEB
— K E I S H (@MikeishaDache) February 6, 2019
https://twitter.com/weeezy___/status/1093359033040412672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1093359033040412672&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2019%2F02%2F07%2Fus%2Fgucci-blackface-sweater%2Findex.html
Which led to this humble apology by Gucci:
You have to admit that does look like a blatant golliwog mouth on an otherwise inoffensive jumper. IMO there is absolutely no way this was designed, approved by several people and then signed off and put on sale without anyone stopping to think for one second that it would cause an absolute shit storm. I mean if Gucci didn’t see this coming they need to fire whoever’s responsible for clocking onto this sort of thing.
Unless… they wanted this shit storm and are of the belief that going viral for this sort of thing is actually beneficial in the long run.
Who even knows in this day and age? Maybe we should ask the guy with the Gucci face tattoo what he thinks.
