- Last modified on6 PM-24 Nov,2018
- Nov 24, 2018
- Written by
News Desk - Published in Entertainment
Chinese superstar actress Zhang Ziyi
It’s not been a great day for Dolce Gabbana which has managed to piss off 1.4 billion people including Chinese superstar actress Zhang Ziyi who has effectively told the Italian fashion house to “eat shit.”
Amid the massive internet backlash on Wednesday against the brand’s “DG Loves China” marketing campaign, which included videos of an Asian woman attempting to eat a pizza, cannoli, and spaghetti with chopsticks, the 39-year-old Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star posted the following image onto her Weibo account. The speech bubble reads “You dropped your shit, I’m returning it to you.”
The post now has more than 360,000 likes. Subsequently, Zhang’s management released a statement saying that she would not be attending Dolce Gabbana’s “The Great Show” in Shanghai, which had been scheduled for Wednesday night, adding that neither she nor anyone on her team would ever again buy or use any of the company’s products.
Zhang was just one of a number of high-profile Chinese actors and models who declared that they were skipping the show after racist comments allegedly made on Instagram by co-founder Stefano Gabbana went viral online. The no-shows included two of the company’s long-time Asia brand ambassadors Wang Junkai and Dilraba Dilmurat. Both later also announced that they had terminated their agreements with DG, removing all posts having anything to do with the brand from their social media accounts.
Chinese actor-singer Chen Kun was the first star to earn kudos for publicly pulling out of the show. After landing at the airport in Shanghai, Chen learned of Gabbana’s alleged comments. He then didn’t even bother to leave the airport, telling his fans “I’m going back.”
Soon, essentially every Chinese celebrity who was scheduled to attend the show had pulled out via a patriotic post on social media. The boycott including the likes of Chen Xuedong, Darren Chen, Darren Wang, Fan Chengcheng Huang Xiaoming, Huo Siyan, Leon Leong, Li Bingbing, Mu Ziyang, Qi Wei, Tang Yixin, Zhang Huiwen, along with long-time editor-in-chief of Vogue China, Angelica Cheung.
Meanwhile, Chinese models reportedly stormed out of the show on their own accord, later taking to the internet to post photos of themselves overlayed with the words “Not Me” in red, sarcastically mirroring Gabbana’s own post in which he claimed that he didn’t write the comments and that his Instagram had been “hacked.”
Even the Communist Youth League has thrown itself into the fray, writing on Weibo that, at minimum, “foreign companies operating in China should respect China and respect the Chinese people.”
In the end, Dolce Gabbana was forced to cancel its Shanghai event, which was supposed to be the biggest in the company’s 33-year history, just four hours before the event was scheduled to begin. At the moment, there are rumors swirling all around about what the fallout will be and who will take the fall for turning The Great Show into The Shit Show.
Dolce Gabbana’s Shanghai show canceled after co-founder’s Instagram meltdown over ‘racist’ ad
The fashion gossip Instagram account Diet Prada has providing rolling updates of all the latest chatter, the juiciest of which has Stefano Gabbana being finally pushed out and the company going forward with only its other co-founder Domenico Dolce. Over the years, the 56-year-old Gabbana has been known for putting his foot in his mouth online — for instance, once calling Italian fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni “cheap” on her wedding day.
Though Stefano Gabbana has also feuded with Diet Prada in the past. So take these rumors with an extra grain of salt.
Finally, we leave you with these images from tonight of the very sad-looking venue where DG’s “The Great Show” was set to take place following the exodus of the Chinese models.
