The Beautiful And Damned

Does fashion have a cultural insensitivity problem? When does appreciation cross the line? Shireen Zainudin looks into why inclusivity is, and will always be, trending.

- Shireen Zainudin

It was pizza and a pair of chopsticks. A cross-cultural pollination that Dolce & Gabbana envisaged would charmingly launch their marketing campaign in China. Instead, the brand found itself embroiled in a serious racism row, facing accusations of fetishism, of gauche cultural clichés. Fast forward a month and social media was abuzz with Prada’s latest handbag charm collection— and not in the #fashiongoals way. The Pradamalia monkey doll with exaggerated red lips looked distressingly similar to Black Sambo, a caricature black boy, grinning and subservient, with a painful history in the US. Both marketing campaign and doll have now been consigned to the graveyard of bonehead fashion blunders.

Fashion is a very real expression of identity. It informs society how we would like to be perceived. We recognise our urban tribes by how we dress as much as by what we eat, listen to, watch, or read. It tells us where we fit in our community. So in a shrinking world, where jetting has become commonplace and a Google community purchases the same products worldwide online, what are the realities of “fashion” in a global village and where do they stand? At what point does embracing become stealing? And in a world where cultural appropriation never goes out of style, does one’s identity diminish if it’s borrowed or blended?