Dolce & Gabbana’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, designed in collaboration with Kim Kardashian, seems to have given the entire fashion industry amnesia.
The glitzy event, which was attended by industry heavyweights including Monica Bellucci, Edward Enninful, and the Kardashian family (who apparently are big fans of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana), garnered celebrity style buzz and, inexplicably, It received high praise.
The brand’s latest stunt, and its seeming acceptance by fashion gatekeepers at Condé Nast and Hearst, begs the question. Does anyone remember Dolce & Gabbana’s pattern of racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and generally crass behavior?
I certainly think so! Below is a timeline of the label’s violations.
2012
The brand sent white models down the runway wearing earrings reminiscent of the colonial-era Blackamoor statue, a racist caricature of black people.
2013
Gabbana decided to attend a Halloween party with a “Disco Africa” theme. Adding insult to injury, he posed for a photo with someone in blackface (presumably designer Alessandro Dellacqua).
2015
Both Dolce and Gabbana have publicly opposed the idea of same-sex couples having children. “I cannot accept so-called chemical children, borrowed wombs, semen selected from catalogs, etc.,” Dolce told the Italian weekly Panorama.
2016
The brand launched a $2,000 shoe called the “Slave Sandal.”
2017
The designer duo responded to the outcry over their support of Melania Trump with a rather tasteless campaign promoting “#BoycottD&G” T-shirts created with the express purpose of trolling critics of the brand.
2018
Gabbana sees fit to comment: “She’s so ugly!!!” An Instagram collage of Selena Gomez’s red carpet style. He also heavily criticized Kate Moss, leaving a terse “no” beneath a photo of the supermodel wearing a Saint Laurent dress.
Later that year, the brand launched a racist advertising campaign depicting an Asian model trying to eat Italian food with chopsticks. “Is it too big for you?” asks the narrator (a man, of course) condescendingly when a model fails to lift a giant cannoli with chopsticks.
After an Instagram user posted about the infuriating campaign, Gabbana allegedly slipped a message in his DMs that read “China’s ignorant dirty stinking mafia.”
This article was published on August 30, 2021 and updated on September 26, 2022
