See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352893724
The fashion scandal: Social media, identity and the globalization of fashion in
the twenty-first century
Article in International Journal of Fashion Studies · July 2021
DOI: 10.1386/infs_00045_1
CITATION
READS
1
1,837
2 authors:
Annamari Vänskä
Olga Gurova
Aalto University
Laurea Universities of Applied Sciences
39 PUBLICATIONS 128 CITATIONS
29 PUBLICATIONS 133 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Fashion and childhood View project
Wearable technology and sustainability View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Olga Gurova on 08 July 2021.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
SEE PROFILE
This is the second draft of the article: Vänskä A. & O. Gurova (2021) The fashion scandal: Social
media, identity and the globalization of fashion in the twenty-first century, International Journal
of Fashion Studies, https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/infs/preprints/content-infs_intellect_00045#Supp. For the final version, please, check the journal.
The fashion scandal:
Social media, identity and the globalization of fashion in the twenty-first
century
Annamari Vänskä & Olga Gurova
Abstract
During the latter part of the 2010s, many fashion brands – e.g., Gucci, Burberry, Dolce &
Gabbana, Prada, Dior – have been caught up with scandals and called out for racism, cultural
appropriation and other types of insensitivity towards vulnerable groups. This article will unpack,
through critical analysis of some of these examples, the changing landscape of the ‘fashion
scandal’ in the late-2010s and their impact on fashion and on society. We understand fashion
scandals as the fuel of fashion. They are debated in the social media and they are controversial
actions, statements or events that cause strong emotional responses and debate. Even though
scandal has been proven effective in fashion marketing for decades, and despite it is still
frequently used, there might be a change on the way. Our examples suggest that with the rise of
social media and its so-called ‘citizen journalism’ the tactics of creating scandals may have lost
their lustre and can easily turn against the brand. We will also discuss new tactics that brands
have adopted to escape undesired scandals by establishing new roles such as the ‘diversity
consultant’.
1. Introduction
On the first weekend of January 2018, an image appeared on the Swedish brand H&M online
store: a Black boy wearing a green hoodie with the phrase ‘Coolest monkey in the jungle’ printed
on it. It did not take long for people to notice this image and for an outrage to begin. The
problematic photograph was heavily criticized in social media for its reference to a monkey, an
animal that has long featured in racial and ethnic slurs. The photograph was criticized as an
example of ‘simianization’, as a form of dehumanization, or the depiction of racial groups and
individuals (in this case a Black boy) as apes (Hund et al. 2015: 12). As a result of this scandal,
many Black celebrities, including the basketball icon LeBron James and Abel Makkonen Tesfaye,
aka The Weeknd, a Black Canadian singer–songwriter, who collaborated with H&M, quickly
responded (Anon. 2018c). He tweeted being ‘deeply offended and will not be working with @HM
anymore’ (The Weeknd 2018, n. pag.). Consumers agreed and called for boycotting the company.
In South Africa, the outrage led to reports of toppled mannequins, overturned racks and
scattered clothes in stores and temporary closing of stores. H&M reacted hastily. By Monday
morning, the image was deleted from the online store. Two days later, the company issued ‘an
unequivocal apology’ stating that ‘we have got it wrong and we are deeply sorry’ and that ‘even
if unintentional, passive or casual racism needs to be eradicated’ (H&M 2018, n. pag.).
1
Even though this scandal was caused by racism, scandals can break out because of different forms
of discrimination: sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism or ableism, for example. The reason
for the scandal is that a dominant or a privileged group, considered more powerful, is argued to
offend and harm a less privileged or a socially vulnerable group. A scandal, thus, is a public event
which invites people to witness this unequal treatment and to take a stand in the matter. It calls
for rethinking of the dominant structures and institutionalized practices rooted in various forms
of discrimination and question its acceptability. We treat the fashion scandal as a market
phenomenon and show how companies, i.e. fashion brands which have resorted to insensitive
and scandalizing tactics in their market communication, have faced critical reactions. This article
shows the dynamics in understanding the scandal in fashion communication.
In the past decades, the fashion scandal has proven to be effective for marketing purposes (e.g.
Dahl et al. 2003). In the 1980s and 1990s, shock was used as a deliberate choice and a tool for
being seen and remembered in market communication, as we will show further in the article.
Now, the change in the character and the dynamics of the scandal is on the way. Only in 2018
and 2019, there were some ten fashion scandals in which a respected and a well-known global
high fashion brand – Gucci, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Dior – was called out for racism,
cultural appropriation and other types of insensitivity towards vulnerable groups (Ferrier 2019;
Ilchi 2019; Diet Prada 2018; Wilson 2018; Blanchard 2018; Larbi 2018). The audience redefines,
for their part, the meanings of the scandal by debating brand communication mainly in social
media. This suggests that the power balance between the brands and the audience has changed.
We recognize two types of fashion scandals: the intentional scandal and the unintentional
scandal. Both touch sensitive issues. While the first deliberately scandalizes, the latter scandalizes
although it was not intended to. The outcome of a fashion scandal is hard to predict. The scandal
can attract desired customers, polish the brand image, create more fame and ultimately more
revenues for the brand. For brands such as Benetton, Calvin Klein and Nike, the fashion scandal
has been elementary in building the brand image as ‘contemporary’ and ‘cutting-edge’. For Dior
and Gucci, at the turn of the millennium, the scandal was a way to refresh and rejuvenate the
stuffy image of the fashion house. But the fashion scandal can also have a less desirable outcome.
It can alienate the customers unless the brand takes corrective actions and changes its code of
conduct as was the case, for instance, with the unintentional scandal in which the brand Dolce &
Gabbana was involved in 2019.
We focus on the unintentional fashion scandal that forces brands to take corrective actions. We
argue that in the 2010s, scandals that do not wither away have become more frequent and
indicate a profound change in the fashion system. Through a series of case studies, we aim to
show how brands deal with unintentional scandals. We discuss new tactics that brands have
adopted to overcome negative effects: the establishment of new roles, such as the ‘diversity
consultant’ within brands. This might be just a first step in a shift towards a more sensitive and
socially responsible conduct that takes cultural difference into account. Contemporary fashion
brands are expected to be in a dialogue with their audiences and the society, and to take ethical
concerns seriously.
2
We critically analyse three case studies that bring forth different aspects of the fashion scandal.
We approach them through Stuart Hall’s (1997) concept of representation according to which
meaning does not inhere in things but is constantly constructed and produced. Since fashion is
constitutive of and constituted by society, the study of the fashion scandal is informative of
conflicts over the social and cultural status of difference. Scandals indicate that fashion plays a
critical role in the social life of people and it is connected multifacetedly to expressing identities
(Gonzáles and Bovone 2012). Fashion is a structure of social integration and differentiation and
the cases reveal that much needs to be done for fashion to become truly inclusive, just and fair.
Following this we decided not to include images of the cases to avoid reinforcing the racist
discourse (Dellmann et al. 2017).
2. Defining the fashion scandal
The concept of ‘fashion scandal’ aims to grasp a current sociocultural and economic phenomenon
that has a tremendous impact on fashion and society. We understand the fashion scandal as
actions, statements or events by a fashion brand, which have caused strong impassioned
responses in the audience. In social media, hardly a day goes by without a smaller or a bigger
national or international scandal. Most scandals wither away when a new scandal arises. Some
scandals do not disappear and can generate systemic changes. This means that the outcome of
a fashion scandal is hard to predict. It can increase interest in fashion and affect change. Equally,
it can bolster prejudice against fashion as a particularly irresponsible sphere of culture. We
understand the fashion scandal as a social phenomenon which potentially has transformative
power. It reveals thoughts, ideas and values about individuals and communities and puts these
under public scrutiny and debate. A scandal is a form of social control: after exposing the
wrongdoer publicly, it aims to either restore or change the situation.
We connect the fashion scandal to Agnès Rocamora’s argument on mediatization of fashion
(2017: 5), meaning that the practices of fashion (production, consumption, distribution and
diffusion) are articulated through and dependent on (social) media. Social media have become
the most important source of information and vehicle of communication between fashion brands
and their audiences. The fashion scandal is representative of mediatization of fashion; it shows
how social media shape and frame contemporary fashion discourse. It is also representative of
the ways in which social media has offered ordinary people a channel through which to express
their opinions and feelings about things and phenomena. The once seemingly passive audience
is now in the position of directing attention and shaping the fashion discourse (Gerrie 2019: 98).
It can demand fashion brands to be accountable to people and to society and to change their
behaviour. Since people can participate in the fashion discourse, companies must acknowledge
it in their brand communication much more now than in the past. Fashion scandal is a
representative of further globalization of fashion enabled by digitalization. Communication
between brands and their audience is conducted in the context of digital media that have enabled
the cultural flow of images, people, material objects and so on.
Nevertheless, online fashion scandals are under-theorized (Scholz and Smith 2019: 2). Marketing
literature mainly focuses on scandals from the business perspective, analysing how brands can
3
quell and benefit from them (Lindenmeier et al. 2012). We focus on a broader discourse, one that
goes beyond marketing strategies and involves the analysis of the audiences’ expectations and
how the scandals also tap on to wider social changes. We explore how brands respond to scandals
that relate to the ongoing cultural discourse on diversity, equality and justice, and how this
reflects a wider change in expectations of brands’ social role beyond profit-making.
We also wish to contribute to the widening body of research on fashion as a principal site of social
and political action in the globalized world. We build on previous work on fashion and identity
from the point of view of feminism, queer theory and race and ethnicity studies. These have
highlighted the role of fashion as a form of resistance and empowerment, especially for women,
gays, lesbians and Black people, in the western context (e.g. Wilson 1985; Cole 2000; Entwistle
2000; Tulloch 2008; Geczy and Karaminas 2013). Debate on the limits of fashion as construction
of identity has also been raised (Gonzales and Bovene 2012). We wish to encourage the readers
of this article to critically think about fashion, identity and cultural difference: fashion researchers
still need to work more on recognizing cross-cultural variation and specificities and how these
should be accounted for within fashion practices, including market communication, in the
globalized world.
3. The fashion scandal as a tool for visual communication of identities
Fashion is a form of visual communication (Barnard 1996; Schroeder 2005; Schroeder and SalzerMörling 2006). Belief of fashion brands in the force of visuality is unwavering and visual
communication is increasing in volume (Schroeder 2005). Before the digital disruption of fashion,
it was estimated that consumers encounter over 3000 advertisements each day (Lasn 1999). In
2017, with the rise of digital media, the number was estimated to vary between 4000 and 10,000
images per day (Simpson 2017). Being heard – or rather, seen – is not an easy task amongst this
bombardment of visual imagery. It has led many fashion brands to use scandal as a strategy of
grabbing consumers’ attention. Historically, deliberate shocking of the audience has proven
effective for many fashion brands. Since the 1980s brands like Benetton, Calvin Klein, Diesel, Dior
and Gucci have managed to build and rebuild their brand identities and fame as ‘nonconforming’,
‘daring’ and ‘cutting-edge’ with the use of scandalous images (e.g. Sender 2004; Vänskä 2011,
2017; Borgerson et al. 2006). Prior to social media, these brands ‘offended the audience’ – or
more to the point, the White European middle-class values of decency and propriety – in order
to be seen and remembered. They managed to create the brand identity as ‘avant-garde’ and
‘liberal-minded’ by connecting the brand to global issues with ethical importance, themes
ranging from AIDS to multicultural same-sex families and nonconforming (sexual) behaviour and
gender ambiguity. The scandalized reactions against ‘offensiveness’ circled around the violation
and transgression of social norms of decency, and the breaking of social or moral codes of
propriety. Shock tactics were fruitful: the brands connected with desired customer-base,
increased their value and economic gain and ultimately became classical examples of the
successful use of the scandal.
Brand marketing strategies build, circulate and challenge identities (Sender 2004; Aspers 2010;
Godart 2012; Kellner 2014; Vänskä 2017). Brand identity consists of words and images for which
the brand draws from culturally agreed codes that encapsulate understandings about identity,
4
including gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, ability or race. Some brands intentionally challenge
these norms – hence the scandal. The deliberate use of the scandal reminds of tactics Stuart Hall
(1997) calls ‘politics of exclusion’: the scandal can reproduce differences between brands and
create boundaries that separates the ‘inside’ from an ‘outside’ or ‘us’ from ‘them’. Brands that
have been successful in using the scandal have aimed to be perceived as ‘rebellious’. They have
also aimed to appeal to a younger consumer segment – to those who tend to use scandalous
tactics to rebel against the values of their elders.
In the 2010s, questions relating to identity have become increasingly important for brands and
for culture outside the commercial sphere. A political scientist Francis Fukuyama (2018: xv–xvi)
has argued that in the 2010s, with the rise of social media, the concept of ‘identity’ has become
a ‘master concept’. In his view, the current concerns over identity are not so much tied to
marginalized groups struggling for recognition, but can regard anyone. Fukuyama investigates
change in global politics and states that traditional political issues of right and left have given way
to (nationalistic) politics that seek to protect cultural identity (Fukuyama 2018: 58). The new
identity politics grow out of a distinction between one’s true inner self and an outer world of
social rules and norms that do not recognize the true inner self. Identity politics stem from this
conflict and from seeking to be recognized – regardless of the group’s factual position in the
society (2018: 7). Contemporary identity politics do not only define socially marginalized groups
but any groups ranging from the blue-collar White working men to the contest between nations
and cultures. This has reformulated the concept of identity politics as a power struggle between
the ‘elites’ and the ‘common people’, the ‘nationalists’ and the ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘West and
the rest’.
Two decades earlier, at the beginning of the millennium, the American philosopher Nancy Fraser
(2001) argued that the increasing interest in identity politics as recognition of group-specific
cultural identity evokes many problems. It may, for example, result in a quest for simplified group
identities instead of a quest for full partnership in social interaction. In this framework,
misrecognition means subordination and unequal opportunity of participation. Examples of
misrecognition include ‘racial profiling’ which associates racialized individuals with criminality,
for example. Recognition is thus an issue of justice (Fraser 2001). Fashion scandal seen through
this lense is thus a request for recognition and signals systemic problems of social and economic
injustice in-built in the fashion industry that call for acknowledgement, criticism and intervention.
In this article we especially focus on fashion scandals that have addressed racial identities and
racism although fashion scandals do not only concern racism. We analyse these scandals in the
context of the fashion system. To study racialized identities and racism in the fashion system
means to analyse how the fashion system reproduces and circulates stereotypical
understandings of race, racial hierarchies, prejudice, bias and discriminatory practices on
different levels. Despite globalization, the fashion scandals and the social media debates
surrounding them indicate that the fashion system is still built on White Eurocentric values. This
further means that the systemic racism of fashion becomes visible through the fashion scandal
and that even the seemingly one-off forms of insensitivity which the fashion scandal materializes
are actually representative of a more profound and much longer history of systemic problems,
5
also beyond fashion. Through the examples, we aim to look at the blatant and more subtle forms
of systemic racism of fashion. We build on research of systemic racism articulated by colleagues
in fashion theory and history (Slade and Jansen 2020), illustration (Reddy-Best et al. 2018), media
(Duan 2017), marketing (Johnson et al. 2019) and modelling (Brown 2019). Although there has
been some progress in eradicating racism, there are still gaps that need addressing and systemic
problems that need to be solved. We agree with Slade and Jansen: we need to unlearn present
structures of systemic racism and rebuild the fashion system in a way that the ‘pleasures of
fashioning the body can be had in just, sustainable, non-exploitative, and non-discriminating
ways’ (2020: 813).
4. Casual racism: ‘Eating with chopsticks’
On 19 November 2018, the Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana posted a series of promotional
videos on its social media accounts Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Weibo, about the brand’s
upcoming show in Shanghai, China. The posts were marked by hashtags #DGLovesChina# and
#DGTheGreatShow# indicating the brand’s enthusiastic intention to charm the Chinese fashion
market and to export Italian love to the Chinese. In the promotional video, a young Asian model
is depicted wearing a red sequin Dolce & Gabbana dress and heavy golden jewellery. She is sitting
at a table in a scene reminiscent of a Chinese-Italian restaurant, eating pizza, spaghetti and
cannoli, visually encapsulating Italian identity as love for food. However, the gist of the video is
not the celebration of Chineseness or Italianness but to show how a non-Italian, a young Asian
woman, struggles to understand Italian/European customs by not understanding how to eat
pizza: instead of using her hands or cutlery, she tries to eat the food with Chinese chopsticks.
With stereotypical Chinese folk music playing in the background, a male-narrator gives
instructions in Chinese on how to eat the food correctly while mispronouncing the brand’s name
(https://bit.ly/3vNyPf3).
The online marketing campaign, titled ‘DG Loves China’, was meant to pay tribute to the country
and its consumers, according to the brand. However, it failed. The supposedly playful take on
cultural difference was not appreciated by the Chinese. On the contrary, after the launch of the
campaign, the Chinese social media users were astounded by the video. They saw the video as a
stereotypical, racist and disrespectful representation of Asian women and argued that it
portrayed them as the ‘Oriental stereotype’. The setting of the video – a red background with
Chinese lanterns, the music – was also criticized for being stereotypical and outdated and the
mispronunciation of the brand name was seen as mocking the Chinese (Chung and Holland 2018).
With the debate, the video quickly went viral and anger spread across platforms both in China
and elsewhere. In the West, the scandal was called out by Diet Prada, an Instagram account that
has become an influential industry watchdog (Diet Prada 2018) who spread the news and
commented on the video on their Instagram account.
The controversy in China and elsewhere centred on the critique of how a global brand with
Western European roots can portray another culture. The debate was about identity and
especially about stereotypical notions of national identities and how they are hierarchically
positioned against one another. The dominant culture, in this case Italy, as the embodiment of
Dolce & Gabbana, was premised on its difference from the Other’, the assumedly unsophisticated
6
and childish China. This ‘clash of the nations’ – Italy/West versus China/East – eventually led to
the deleting of the post in less than 24 hours after its release (Hall and Suen 2018; Pan 2018).This
did not help but a ‘Boycott Dolce’ campaign ensued on Weibo. The brand made things worse
when an emotional, aggressive and racist rant was posted on Stefano Gabbana’s personal
Instagram account:
If the Chinese feel offended by a girl who spells pizza or pasta with chopsticks means that those
Chinese feel inferior and then it’s a problem not ours!!! The whole world knows that the Chinese
eat with chopsticks and that the Westerners with a fork and knife!!! Is this racism??
(Rodriguez 2018, n. pag.)
In the end, the feud escalated from the brand and from social media to the national and global
level. First China’s governmental body, the Cultural and Tourism Department, forced Dolce &
Gabbana to cancel its runway show in Shanghai only a few hours before it was scheduled to take
place (Zheng and Pan 2018), about which Diet Prada (2018) also posted.1 When the scandal was
taken up by the western media beyond Diet Prada, the brand lost all its celebrity ambassadors
and e-tailer presence in China, the American reality-TV celebrity and socialite Kim Kardashian
deleted an Instagram post of her wearing the brand (Flora 2019) and the brand was ostracized
from red-carpet events both in China and in the West. In an attempt to save face, the brand
announced that the designer’s account and the official account of the brand were hacked. This
did not help: the runway show remained cancelled and Dolce & Gabbana was forced out of China.
The case tells a story about European imperialism and how this old ‘world order’ does not apply
anymore. It is also a potent example of the global power of social media: the debate did not stay
in China but spread globally. The source of the scandal was the colonial representation of China,
visible in the visual and textual rhetoric of the video. In it, Asia is seen as a feminine continent,
embodied by the Chinese model. Furthermore, following the tradition of western
representations of the Far East, Asian people are also depicted as delicate, passive and simple –
hence the giggling woman who does not understand how to eat pizza. The audience reacted
against this stuffy colonialist stereotype of China and Chineseness and the colonizing ‘White gaze’
and ‘optical colonialism’; the tradition of the objectifying gaze which derives equally from the
nineteenth-century racialist theories and the imagery of ‘primitive peoples’ (McClintock 1995;
Loomba 1998).
The scandal was ultimately about respect and recognition: that the brand did not respect the
market it aimed for and did not recognize its imperialist attitude encapsulated by the video. For
the scandal to function, it needs an ‘us’ – the brand and its followers – as well as ‘they’ against
which values are positioned. A successful scandal always needs an ‘enemy’ which ‘we’ can laugh
at and ridicule. Who was the ‘we’ here? And who were ‘they?’ According to the debate, ‘we’ were
the White Italian/European culture and ‘they’, China and the Chinese. The marketing ploy did not
work, because the brand positioned their desired audience as the enemy. The creation of ‘we’
would have required the brand to invite the Chinese to laugh at the outdated colonialist
stereotypes by ridiculing the White European culture and its colonialist values. The scandalized
reactions and the brand’s response show that by juxtaposing the western/Italian identity and
7
culture with an Asian/Chinese one, Dolce & Gabbana conjured up the colonial history of fashion.
The problem was that they did not question it but cast the White voyeuristic, exoticizing and
infantilizing gaze (Said 1979) over the Chinese.
The critique of the video explains the racism in which ‘the East’ is still constructed in western
cultural texts and imagination. According to Edward Said (1979: 2), Orientalism is a style of
thought based on ontological and epistemological distinctions made between ‘the Orient’ and
(most of the time) ‘the Occident’. At stake are relations of power, domination and hegemony
(Said 1979: 5) that position ‘the Occident’ in a hierarchically superior position compared to ‘the
Orient’ (1979: 7). The video encapsulated an ideology that was described more than 40 years ago
– despite the assumed ‘globalized’ and ‘multicultural’ fashion of the 2010s. It exposed how
persistent racism and other forms of xenophobia still are in fashion. It also revealed how the
brand did not recognize Chinese culture as equally developed and appreciated as Italian culture.
The scandal, in this case, is one of cultural blindness. Instead of critiquing Orientalism and the
colonialist tradition by making it into the mutual enemy of the brand and its desired customers,
the brand ended up reinforcing them.
5. Identity across time and space: ‘To My Ni**as in Paris’
Our second example comes from Russia. In January 2018, Miroslava Duma, a Russian digital
fashion entrepreneur, investor and freelance-writer of the Russian editions of Harper’s Bazaar
and Vogue, made a post on Instagram. The post featured a bouquet of flowers with the note, ‘To
my ni**as in Paris’, referencing a song by the American rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West
(https://bit.ly/2K5M3kS).2 The post was meant to celebrate a forthcoming fashion show in Paris
of Duma’s friend – the Russian couture fashion designer Ulyana Sergeenko. The note was written
and signed by Ulyana, with a smiley-face emoji. Instead of invoking a stream of hearts and good
luck wishes for the show, the post caused an outrage on social media. British fashion model
Naomi Campbell accused Duma and Sergeenko of racism by reposting the image in the Instagram
stories tagging Sergeenko with an additional comment, ‘[t]his better not be real’ (Young 2018, n.
pag.). Stylist, creative consultant and fashion director Marc Goehring from the English-language
German magazine on contemporary culture 032c posted a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt that
said ‘Hi My name is Miroslava Duma I’m a racist I am a homophobe I am a transphobe’
(https://bit.ly/3oCnqey). Goehring referred to other scandals that Duma was involved in in 2012
after her homophobic and transphobic comments against transgender fashion model Andreja
Pejić and fashion blogger and socialite Bryanboy (https://bit.ly/2W2j309, the last post in the
carousel).
In response to the scandal, Sergeenko cancelled her show and issued an apology, stating:
I was born in a small town in Kazakhstan, my daughter is half Armenian, I have never divided
people on white and black. Kanye West is one of my favorite musicians, and NP is one of my most
favorite songs. And yes, we call each other the N word sometimes when we want to believe that
we are just as cool as these guys who sing it.
(Heller 2018, n. pag.)
8
Duma replied, ‘[i]t is true that I come from a culture where words and attitudes may be
different than the Western ideals that I, in fact, have come to understand and accept’
(Chitrakorn 2018, n. pag.).
The Russian fashion establishment reacted in a somewhat critical but also apologetic way after
the scandal had already exploded in the western media. They practically repeated that the
exchange of messages was not deliberate racism. Pavel Vardishvili, the editor of L’Officiel, wrote:
‘I feel really sorry for these ladies, who are still living in 2012 and do not observe their language.
[…] But in this case even a child understands that they are not racists. It’s just one rich white girl
calling another one ni**a’ (https://bit.ly/372ScHo).
This scandal makes visible how identity recognition can differ across time and space. The
recognition of identity claims varies from nation to nation, and from culture to the next and also
historically; it depends on historical legacy and on current local policies on identities. The scandal
can be considered as a clash of perceptions of ‘race’ in Anglo-Saxon and Russian contexts. Unlike
Russia, the United States has a long history of addressing race and racism critically (Nicholson
2008). This also shows in the discourse of the scandal in the Russian context. While Duma and
Sergeenko responded to criticism, they did not reflect on the history of racism in the Russian
culture – without the intervention of Western Europeans and Americans, the actions might not
have been acknowledged as racist.
The views of Duma and Sergeenko reflect the history of identity politics and the human rights
movement in an authoritarian context. It is rooted in the political situation of Russia, which
changed from an imperial Communist Party state to a federal democracy in the 1990s and to the
‘electoral authoritarianism’ under Putin’s governance (McAuley 2015). According to Cai
Wilkinson (2014), for a long time, but especially during Putin’s third term (2012–18), Russia has
demonstrated scepticism towards the human rights discourse that is based on western liberalism
and recognition of identities. The country has become a leading opponent of universal human
rights globally by promoting ‘traditional values’ and by gaining many allies across the world
(mostly, among other authoritarian regimes, but also among the right-wing population of
democratic countries). Orthodox Christianity – of the White, as Suchland (2018) notes – is seen
to be the primary source of the Russian ‘traditional values’. Wilkinson (2014) claims that these
traditional values represent a serious challenge to the viability of identity-related claims, because
they are based on a refusal to recognize groups that do not comply with prevailing moral values
of the majority. Historically, traditional values, in particular those related to gender, sexuality,
age and ability, have led to the marginalization and silencing of these groups as happens in Russia,
for instance, with its anti-gay propaganda law introduced in 2013 (Wilkinson 2014). Therefore,
the concept of traditional values legitimizes cultural relativism vis-à-vis universality of human
rights, which the discourse of identity recognition assumes. This cultural relativism is in line with
another idea inscribed in the dominant political discourse – the idea of Russia as a ‘distinct unique
civilization’ that is different from the West and the East. Since the civilizations cannot understand
each other, this provides a base for racial attitudes; civilizational discourse drifts towards racism
(Shnirelman 2009, 2011).
9
Sergeenko and Duma’s posts support the argument that racism has not been properly recognized
as an urgent social and cultural problem in Russia. That is why Sergeenko and Duma deny the
racist connotation of the N-word and instead inscribe a subcultural meaning to it, namely,
comparing themselves with the ‘cool’ representatives of the western pop-culture. Other
commentators reframed the racial scandal in class terms pointing out that this is the rich girls’
conversation. Sergeenko’s response regarding her being able to relate to ethnic minorities since
her daughter was from a multi-ethnic descent belongs to the discriminatory discourse of
racialized ethnicities. Duma, who stated that she comes 'from a culture where words and
attitudes may be different than the Western ideals’ (Chitrakorn 2018, n. pag.), refers to the
civilizational concept and cultural relativism that we see as racist. Homophobia, transphobia and
racism are part of that civilizational discourse. Overall, the comments of the Russian fashion
establishment remind us of what sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2006) observed in the United
States and called ‘color-blind racism’. This powerful racial ideology, which dominated in the
United States in the late 1960s, is summarized in the phrase ‘we don’t see color, just people’.
According to Bonilla-Silva (2006: 1), most White Americans in the post-civil rights United States
support that view. However, by saying so these people ignore colour-coded inequalities that are
fuelled through subtle and non-racial mechanisms of institutionalized and systemic racism that
exist in society. Duma and Sergeenko represented themselves as innocents claiming they do not
differentiate people to White and Black and interpret the meaning of the N-word in subcultural
terms. Following Bonilla-Silva, this represents an internalized colour-blind racism that has, as we
have argued, a place in the hegemonic Russian discourse.
6. Scandals and the systemic racism of fashion
Our third example comes also from 2018. On 15 December, the Italian brand Prada found itself
in a racism scandal, caused by its ‘Pradamalia’ bric-a-brac project. In its press release, the brand
defines the project as ‘a new family of mysterious tiny creatures that are one part biological, one
part technological, all parts Prada. The seven new creatures […] exhibit supernatural powers’
(https://bit.ly/3n6bHV8).
The description reads harmless, playful and childish – associations that define the brand’s
signature identity. A video accompanying the press release shows what will be expected:
cartoon- or toy-like knick-knack clearly aimed at the younger consumer segment.However, when
the paraphernalia – key chains and small figurines – were launched, they quickly spurred a
scandal and a boycott in social media under the hashtag #BoycottPrada. It was started by the
New York-based civil rights attorney Chinyere Ezie who called out the brand in her Facebookpost. In it, Ezie described the figurines, especially a monkey trinket with big red lips as ‘racist and
denigrating blackface imagery’ (Ezie 2018; Murray 2018).3 Ezie had seen the figurines on the
Prada shop window and inside the boutique in SoHo New York. She claimed that they exemplify
the western fashion’s lack of interest in People of Colour as consumers.
The controversy was soon taken up by the American TV-programme The Daily Show (2018). It
stated that if the brand had any People of Colour in the management team, they would have
been able to avoid the scandal, thus arguing that the incident witnessed a severe lack of
knowledge about issues on race and ethnicity due to the employment structure of the company.
10
In this case, then, the scandal was about ignorance and what effects it can have. The problem
with lack of People of Colour or their limited ‘niche’ prospects among marketing and
management professionals in business is known (Davis 2018). Unlike its peer Dolce & Gabbana,
Prada admitted their mistake, pulled the figurines and announced that they ‘never had the
intention of offending anyone’ and that they ‘abhor all forms of racism and racist imagery’
(Blanchard 2018, n. pag.). A year later, in March 2019, the company’s chairman finally admitted
that Prada headquarters did not have any Black employees and that they should have (Friedman
2020).
This scandal brings forth the casual use of racist imagery. The figurine was interpreted to draw
from and to continue the history of racism, slavery, lynching and White colonialism. The history
of European colonialist tradition in art is well known (McClintock 1995). The case of Prada
connects to this tradition but, as professor of gender and postcolonial studies Sandra Ponzanesi
(2017) has noted, the Italian popular culture and fashion has also a long tradition of constructing
the colonized Black Other as different and subordinate from the Italian identity. This strain of
thought connects to Italian fascism under Mussolini, which made use of mass media in
constructing a dichotomy between the colonizer (Italy) and the colonized (Africa). It was
supported by Italy’s expansion into Africa, serving to project an image of a ‘great Italy’, echoing
the mythic role of Ancient Rome. During the hey-day of the Italian colonialism in the 1920s and
1930s, Italy produced and circulated photographs of the Black Venus, aimed at portraying
‘truthful and realistic’ portrayals of native women (Hall and Sealy 2001: 39). The ‘Pradamalia’
figurines indicate that this tradition still continues at the highest level of Italian fashion,
reproducing fixed and biased images of Blackness and Whiteness.
The scandalized reactions exposed an equation: ‘colonization = thingification’ (Loomba 1998:
204). ‘Thingification’ reduces the colonized into objects, into the figurine. The scandal reveals yet
again a more profound problem of the systemic racism of fashion. It means that the policies,
practices, representations and norms of fashion still reinforce racial inequality, and privilege
‘Whiteness’ over ‘Colour’ (Lawrence et al. 2004). It is not reducible to any single event; it is a
result of historically accumulated White privilege that is reinforced by contemporary culture. In
summer 2020 the New York Times reported that the Council of Fashion Designers of America had
drafted a statement to end systemic racism in the fashion industry (Tillet and Friedman 2020).
According to the statement, the fashion system needs to end racial injustice by ‘placing black
talent in all sectors of the fashion business to help achieve a racially balanced industry’
(https://bit.ly/2K8MYkx). What is especially interesting is that the figurines were not taken up by
Italians but by Americans: a New York-based lawyer and an American TV-programme.
Perhaps the biggest scandal was, in the end, that even a brand known for having been led by one
of the very few women in the fashion world, Miuccia Prada, can still fall for systemic racism,
because of not having dealt with its own colonial and fascist past. The scandal conjures up both
Italy’s colonial past and the dark history of fascism which dominated politics and fashion
(Paulicelli 2004). The development of an Italian national identity in fashion was a deliberate effort
and aimed at separating it from other European – especially French – identities and from nonEuropean ones. Similar tendencies are found elsewhere in Europe, especially from Nazi Germany
11
where clothing also played a central role in constructing the ‘pure Aryan’ identity (Guenther
2004). Although the figurine is the product of this history, the scandal linked it to the history of
American slavery and not to the European or Italian fascist and racist past. This suggests that the
discourse on race and racism is dominated by North American voices. This is also visible in the
outcome of the scandal: in February 2019, the New York Times reported that the New York City
Commission on Human Rights, a law enforcement agency of the municipal government, was
going to oversee that all employees at Prada in New York and the executives in Milan take
‘sensitivity training including “racial equity training”’ (Friedman 2020, n. pag.). Actors involved
were American even though more local knowledge and understanding of race and racism was
clearly also needed. Contemporary consumers and fashion companies alike need to accumulate
their cultural competence, understanding and knowledge of their own cultural heritage – and
not just that of other cultures.
7. Consumers, fashion scandal and social media
A fashion scandal exemplifies the complex relationship between brands and consumers. Our
examples suggest that an important ingredient in a fashion scandal is the strong emotional
reaction of the audience, or a ‘consumer outrage’ (Lindenmeier et al. 2012). Consumer outrage
is not a new term; it has been used to describe strong negative morally charged reactions against
unethical corporate behaviour, statements or events and marketing images found problematic
by some groups in terms of identity recognition. Reactions are expressed as boycotts and
buycotts, social media likes and dislikes, posts and reposts, comments, memes, online petitions,
articles and other forms of (online) activism.
Fashion scandal is close to ‘online firestorms’ identified as the ‘sudden discharge of large
quantities of messages containing negative word of mouth and complaint behavior against a
person, company, or group in social media networks’ (Pfeffer et al. 2014: X). Online firestorms
imply strong emotions. The emotional reactions can vary and both fashion brand’s protesters
and supporters can contribute to the fashion scandal. In marketing literature, the online
firestorms, also called ‘social media firestorms’ (Scholz and Smith 2019), refer to risks that
branding faces in the era of social media. To be caught up in a social media firestorm is not
necessarily a desirable aim for the brand in contemporary culture, like the cases well illustrate.
On top of leading to boycotts they threaten the brand image and lower the value of the brand.
Researchers do not agree on the measures a brand should take when faced with a scandal. Some
suggest that brands should act quickly (Benoit 1997), respectfully (Grégoire et al. 2015) and fix
the problem (Rauschnabel et al. 2016). Others argue that responding to moral outrage is not
always advisable – especially if the outrage is ‘instigated by a loud minority overpowering a silent
majority of people who do not share the same concerns’ (Scholz and Smith 2019: 1101).
However, since mediatization of fashion has brought consumers and brands closer together, it is
harder for brands to ignore the feedback they receive. Social media enables consumers to react
immediately, while it can also make the scandal viral and thus large scale. In social media, the
fashion scandal follows word-of-mouth tactics and issues can be raised by anyone. Our cases also
exemplify how the digitally connected audiences have access to fashion brands and can thus also
impact their behaviour. This has forced brands to be more transparent and more dialogical – to
12
open their formerly closed doors, as it were. This has made fashion communities powerful
collective voices (Bendoni 2017). They can fuel debate and invite new users to join. This is also
one of the reasons why brands deal with fashion scandals more cautiously now than before.
Social media have a ‘megaphone effect’: access of a single person to mass-audiences and an
opportunity for a single speech act to become viral, have an impact on the broader societal
agenda (McQuarrie et al. 2013). This was exactly the case with all examples discussed. Social
media enables creating solidarities and instigating a ‘community of sentiment’ when people start
feeling things together (Appadurai 1996: 8). According to Brand Intelligence platform (Gronewold
2018), which polled 25,830 adults about their perception of H&M after the racism-scandal in
September 2018, showed an 8 per cent rise in the company’s unfavourability even though the
company apologized for the photograph on their online shop. African Americans’ unfavourability
towards the brand almost tripled and consumers aged 18–29, which is the age group that
consistently indicates the most interest in purchasing from H&M, unfavourability almost more
than doubled. In comparison, among White interviewees, change in this regard was non-existent
(Gronewold 2018).
These numbers, although they show consumer reactions, beg the question: who reacts? Those
who struggle with identity recognition? Those who just dislike the brand? Or someone else? Like
marketing scholars have shown, the rise of social media has changed the visibility and dynamics
of brand crises when different groups can directly and publicly criticize the brand for bigger and
smaller issues (Scholz and Smith 2019). Although scholars in marketing refer to scandals merely
as a business issue within the brand–consumer relations, we use the concept of consumer in a
broader sense, as a figure that goes beyond customers and followers of a particular brand. Our
cases show that contemporary fashion scandals impact both the fashion brands and the society,
and that the discussants involved are individuals, consumers and collectives, or concerned
citizens. In our examples they were ordinary people, editors and journalists, celebrities, fashion
models and even family members of the involved individuals. A question to ponder is, whether it
would make more sense to use the broader category of ‘audience’ and not merely that of the
‘consumer’. In addition, new actors must be recognized: in this case Diet Prada, an Instagram
account owned by insiders of the fashion system. They have a strong voice in creating scandals
and in critiquing and calling brands out on cultural appropriation, bigotry, lack of diversity and
discrimination on the runways, in design, editorials and marketing campaigns, etc. (Gerrie 2019).
Diet Prada has 2.7 million followers (in April 2021) and has the ability to mobilize people and
pressure brands into a dialogue.
Contemporary brands need to react to scandals quickly. While H&M and Prada swiftly issued an
apology, reinforcing the interpretation that the companies were guilty of (unintended) racism
and were able to bring back consumers’ belief in the brand (Gronewold 2018), Dolce & Gabbana
adopted the denial strategy by playing the victim and attacking the Chinese, denying the crisis.
Two years after the scandal, the brand is still rejected by the Chinese, one of the brand’s most
important markets and consumer groups. At the time of writing this article, Dolce & Gabbana
have even sued Diet Prada for ‘defamation’ of their brand in relation to the #DGLovesChina
campaign and the runway show (Fraser 2021). According to the suit, Diet Prada has cost the
13
company ‘valuable celebrity partnerships with major figures like Kim Kardashian and Cardi B’
(Fraser 2021, n.pag.)– in other words they do not seem to recognize their own role in the matter.
Since the scandal, the brand has been eliminated from all major Chinese malls and e-tailers, and
searches for the brand on various sites result in error messages (Flora 2019) which is hardly the
fault of one Instagram account. It has even been stated that a come-back of the brand would
require that China as a nation must forgive them but that this is unlikely (Williams 2020). In 2019,
the brand was down compared to the year preceding the scandal. The economic consequences
were felt. Although Dolce & Gabbana’s overall revenues grew 4.9 per cent in 2019, the AsiaPacific market shrank from 25 per cent to 22 per cent and the company was reported to expect
further sales decline in Greater China within the next fiscal year (Cristoferi 2019). These data
illustrate the longer-term economic consequences of fashion scandals, beyond the emotional
reactions.
8. Making use of fashion scandal: Establishing new roles
Consumer insight research shows that consumers actually do want brands to be political and
express their position in relation to urgent issues (Piacenza 2018). Business is now expected to
be an agent of change (Sarkar and Kotler 2018). That is why fashion companies should not stay
neutral but act like activists and contribute to discussions on acute social and cultural matters
(Sarkar and Kotler 2018). One way of doing this is to utilize ‘cultural branding’ in fashion
marketing. Cultural branding is a powerful branding strategy which aims at creating a myth.
Unlike the conventional approach, which targets consumer segments or psychographic types,
cultural branding goes after the most intense anxieties and desires that run through society and
that have roots in actual acute tensions that people feel between their own lives and society’s
prevailing ideology (Holt 2003, 2004).
Cultural branding means that branding has been opened up to include cultural, sociological and
theoretical enquiry that both complements and complicates economic and managerial
approaches (Schroeder 2009). It also means that brands are understood as cultural, ideological
and sociological objects and not just commercial actors. It demands brands to develop their
understanding of culture, ideology and society.
This strategy, utilized in the past by Benetton (Borgerson et al. 2006: 153–65) and Nike (Holt
2003) among others, enables brands to join the conversation about deeper sociocultural issues
and contribute to the discussion regarding identity recognition through their marketplace
activities. When applying the cultural branding strategy, fashion brands can gain strong support
among consumers; yet, they can also make themselves vulnerable to criticism and strong
emotional reactions since cultural branding often means attachment to active groups who react
(Holt 2003). It also clashes with the prevailing conventions and the ‘cultural orthodoxy’ (Holt and
Cameron 2010) regarding sexist, racist and other discriminating stereotypes that prevail in a
given society. It assumes taking a stand on issues that commonly belong to the sphere of politics.
The report ‘State of Fashion 2020’ (Amed et al. 2019) indicated exactly this. The report states
that contemporary consumers are enlightened and more demanding: they call for the fashion
industry to become more sensitive and inclusive. It even argues that year 2020 would be a
14
watershed for inclusive culture, meaning that fashion companies would need to become
proactive advocates of diversity and inclusion and take diverse races, genders and sexual
orientations into account across organizations and in leadership roles (Amed et al. 2019). In the
light of our examples and events that they unfolded, it seems that brands have been forced to
take diversity and identity politics more seriously now than they did before. Many leading fashion
companies have recognized the importance of being inclusive by embedding it across
organizations. They have, for example, established new roles and positions in their managerial
themes.
While Dolce & Gabbana finally issued a video apology, H&M appointed its first ‘global leader for
diversity and inclusiveness’, Annie Wu in February 2019 (Blanchard 2018, n. pag.). Prada soon
followed and established a ‘Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council’, chaired by the director Ava
DuVernay and the artist Theaster Gates (Anon. 2019b). Other western fashion brands have
followed the example. After having been caught in a fashion scandal for showcasing a hoodie
with string ties resembling a noose around the neck on one of its catwalk models at the London
Fashion Week, the British brand Burberry announced a series of diversity and inclusivity
initiatives with an aim to ‘make real change happen’ in February 2019 (Devaney 2019). In July
2019, Gucci, which had already initiated a magazine Chime for Change in 2013 (Anon. 2013) that
aims at promoting gender equality in fashion (https://chime.gucci.com), announced that it will
hire its first-ever ‘head of diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (Bramley 2019, n. pag.). The hire was
published after the brand was accused of racism for producing a $890 blackface-resembling
balaclava sweater (Bobb 2019). Also, in July 2019, the French haute-couture giant Chanel joined
the club. Vogue reported that the brand aims to ‘amplify voices of colour’ by hiring the first global
head of diversity and inclusion (Newbold 2019). The hire followed the brand’s new aim to be
more transparent about its operations and values: in its ‘Report to Society 2018’, Chanel
announced that while enhancing women’s rights and gender equality has always been part of the
brand’s DNA, enhancing inclusion and diversity is ‘an ongoing opportunity’ (Anon. 2018b: 60).
The efforts of brands have mostly been encountered with praise but some scepticism has also
been in the air. For one, it has been argued that brands should already know better not to sell
clothes with racist or otherwise insensitive imagery. Secondly, insiders and commentators of
fashion have also noted that fashion brands are ‘in the business of publicity’, and brands should
know to avoid this kind of attention (Anon. 2019a). Thirdly, more academic research is needed
to evaluate whether diversity claims by brands are aligned with their other business activities and
organizational practices, or whether the brands just implement ‘diversity washing’ instead of
making actual changes (Henderson and Hamerling 2021).
9. Concluding remarks
In the age of social media and ‘citizen journalism’ (Allan and Thorsen 2009) brands are easily
caught up with fashion scandals touching upon racism and other forms of cultural insensitivity
and discrimination. The contemporary global ecosystem of fashion is largely constituted on
digital platforms where people share and debate fashion news and trends. Platforms have also
made amateurs into important watchdogs of the fashion system. The promise of the Internet and
the social media platforms, the so-called ‘platform society’ (van Dijck et al. 2018), enables
15
amateurs to override the official authorities of fashion. What fashion means is increasingly not
in the hands of fashion brands or the fashion establishment but in the hands of ordinary people:
consumers, activists and equality advocates.
The fashion scandals suggest that social media platforms are part of a new social order which has
changed the fashion system and which affects companies and their (social) interaction with their
consumers and other audiences. The scandals indicate that companies have a societal role
beyond making profit. Fashion brands are expected to be responsible. For a while this has meant
environmental responsibility as the ‘sustainable fashion’ discourse so powerfully indicates. Our
examples show that a new discourse is in the making: that of social responsibility and more
widely, that of ‘cultural sustainability’, originally considered as a component of social
sustainability, now often regarded as a distinct component of equal importance to other
sustainability concerns (Hawkes 2001). It widens understanding of sustainability by going beyond
environmental issues: to questions of, e.g., shared patterns of thought and behaviour, values,
and beliefs.
Already in 2014, the editors of the International Journal of Fashion Studies (Mora et al. 2014:
144) called for a more nuanced discussion of the ‘cultural dimension of sustainability’. We have
aimed to contribute to this discourse through the case studies: while ordinary people have an
active role in taking up issues and in creating the contemporary fashion scandal, the fashion
companies also have an important role in undoing systemic racism of the fashion system and
mend forms of insensitivity and discrimination in their own practices. The world has changed and
the fashion companies can no longer ignore this. The cases show that fashion becomes more
culturally sustainable when brands engage in dialogue and educate themselves, and are willing
to acknowledge their mistakes and learn from them. The cases further exemplify that the
discourse on identity-related issues is context-specific. Differences in the pace of the discourse
should also be acknowledged: change happens at a different pace in different places.
Fashion scandals can be a point of growth for fashion and society. For one, social media clearly
enhances dialogical engagement between brands and consumers. Secondly, the scandals have
also enabled – or forced – brands to be more open and transparent about their processes and
conduct. The dialogue, as problematic as it can be, can actually become a moving force for
social and cultural change. By participating in this dialogue, fashion brands position themselves
as contributors in the current sociocultural discussion on identity recognition and diversity. The
changing nature of scandalized reactions and their negative effects on sales, fame and brand
value is a strong call for brands to be socially and culturally sensitive and responsible actors.
References
Adut, A. (2008), On Scandal: Moral Disturbances in Society, Politics, and Art, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Allan, S. and Thorsen, E. (eds) (2009), Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives, New York: Peter
Lang.
Amed, I., Berg, A., Balchandani, A., Hedrich, S., Rölkens, F., Young, R. and Poojara, S. (2019),
‘The State of Fashion 2020’, BoF and McKinsey & Company, https://mck.co/2PULIol. Accessed
15 June 2020.
16
Anon. (2018a), ‘Dolce & Gabbana fiasco shows importance, risks of China market’, Los Angeles
Times, 26 November, https://lat.ms/3tvel9C. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Anon. (2018b), ‘Report to Society 2018’, Channel, https://bit.ly/3nR2q4J. Accessed 15 June
2020.
Anon. (2018c), ‘The Weeknd to end H&M partnership over “monkey” ad controversy’, The
Local, 9 January, https://bit.ly/3tmHi7y. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Anon. (2019a), ‘Burberry, Gucci, and Prada announce diversity councils in response to recent
backlash’, The Fashion Law, 26 February, https://bit.ly/33lX2x2. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Anon. (2019b), ‘Prada announces the diversity and inclusion advisory council’, Prada Group, no
date, https://bit.ly/3nSDae6. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Anon. (2013), ‘Chime for Change’, Equilibrium Gucci, no date, https://chime.gucci.com.
Accessed 15 June 2020.
Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimension of Globalization, Minneapolis, MN
and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Aspers, P. (2010), Orderly Fashion: A Sociology of Markets, Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton
University Press.
Barnard, M. (1996), Fashion as Communication, London and New York: Routledge.
Bartiromo, M. (2018), ‘H&M apologizes for “coolest monkey” ad featuring black child’, New
York Post, 8 January, https://bit.ly/3b4MfeK. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Bauman, Z. (2001), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bendoni, W. K. (2017), Social Media for Fashion Marketing: Storytelling in a Digital World,
London: Bloomsbury.
Benoit, W. L. (1997), ‘Image repair discourse and crisis communication’, Public Relations
Review, 23:2, pp. 177–86.
Blanchard, T. (2018), ‘Courting controversy: From H&M’s “coolest monkey” to Gucci’s blackface
jumper’, The Guardian, 8 February, https://bit.ly/3xPGaN2. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Bobb, B. (2019), ‘Gucci’s Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Renée Tirado is the
outsider fashion needs’, Vogue, 7 October, https://bit.ly/3f0VcXx. Accessed 15 June 2020.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006) Racism without Racists. Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial
Inequality in the United States. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
17
View publication stats