Gucci at 'The Milan Fashion Week': Cultural Appropriation of Religious Symbols from India, While The Debate is Missing

The Milan Fashion week showcasing Autumn/ Winter Collections is on in Italy from February 21-27. The fashion week is part of the big four fashion events – Paris, London and New York and is regarded as one of the world’s most important fashion capitals. Fashion houses and designers regularly choose Milan to showcase their newest trends and to make fashion statements that reverberate around the world.

The Milan Fashion Week of 2018 did make waves but for the wrong reason as the house of Gucci faced negative publicity and a social media backlash for their Autumn/ Winter offerings. The line showcased by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele was a phantasmagorical inspiration which has received rave reviews. However, apart from the chameleons, rattle snakes, albino baby dragons and models carrying their own replica head, Michele’s line was heavily inspired by non-western cultures. Especially, Asian ones. And therein lies the problem.

Gucci’s Autumn/ Winter 2018 ready to wear line featured 90 models out of which 78 were white/ Caucasian. Yet, the fashion line heavily featured fashion accessories such as beaded head-wears inspired by African dance wigs, a headgear that was a mini-pagoda assuming an ode to China, a lace niqab and scarves as hijab inspired by the Middle East, and finally models wearing bindi with pants, crystal full body chain jewelry and turbans (the sikh pagari) inspired from India.

This offering by the multi-billion dollar fashion house of Gucci has rightfully been accused of cultural appropriation. To be clear, cultural appropriation has been defined by Oxford dictionary as, the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society. While Cambridge dictionary defines cultural appropriation as the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.

Gucci’s fashion line at the Milan show unfortunately followed the definition of cultural appropriation to the T. By using white/ Caucasian models to showcase beaded head gear, using the pagoda as a head wear which is a place of Buddhist worship and putting models in a hijab smacks of the worst sort of lack of respect or at the very least ignorance by one of the biggest fashion names in the world.

The beaded head wear inspired by African dance wigs on Gucci models will be added to other instances of African cultural appropriation such as western pop stars flaunting corn rows and dreadlocks and face paint. The pagoda as a head gear shouts out the west’s age old problem of seeing East Asia as ‘the orient’.  The British left the South Asian sub-continent 70 years ago yet the West’s education of East Asia continues to drape it in colours of ‘exoticism’.

With the niqab and hijab, Gucci enters dangerous territory because the scarf is a religious article of clothing for Muslim women as well as seen as a sign of subjugation by many of those who have to wear it. One has to wonder at what fashion statement Gucci was attempting to make with these looks.

However, the worst faux pas of the night was white Gucci models sporting blue turbans/ pagaris inspired by the sikh dastaars. The turban is unequivocally a religious symbol and is part of the five Ks of Sikhism. The turban covers the uncut hair of a sikh man or woman and is tied in a particular way. Gucci’s offering made the turban into a fashion accessory sported by white models. The irony was not lost as people across the world, Sikhs and non-sikhs alike lambasted the fashion brand for the sheer inappropriateness of the offering.

To underscore the point of the lack of acceptance of different religions and their symbols in the West, Gucci’s fashion show coincided with a Sikh man being attacked outside the British Parliament.

The debate of cultural appropriation has often been debated in the West from the appropriation  dreadlocks to the way English itself is spoken and sung by rappers in the U.S. Yet, cultural appropriation is yet to find mention in India’s vocabulary. As the debate raged on twitter about Gucci’s insensitivity and blatant cultural appropriation there was nary an opinionated voice from India that was bothered about it.

No fashion designer, celebrity or for that matter an influencer chose to call Gucci out. The Indian media seamlessly went from reporting the Nirav Modi Scam to Sridevi’s untimely death. In fact, Gucci’s take on crystal jewelry accessories is eerily familiar to Beyonce’s get up in the Coldplay song Hymns for the Weekend. A song which was also criticized for cultural appropriation and propagating India’s exoticism.

So why is it that cultural appropriation is apparently not offensive to Indians? Do we take any form of representation in western popular culture as increasing acceptance? Or are Indians, at home and in the West now immune to being West’s continued source of inspiration for the exotic? Or are we ourselves uncaring of appropriating culture that is around us and hence see no offence as the West does the same (think Priyanka Chopra acting as Mary Kom)?

While we introspect, five days after Gucci’s show the photographs of models wearing turbans are missing from the fashion brands Twitter and Instagram feed. The house is yet to release a statement on the controversy but Marco Bizzarri, CEO of Gucci will have a lot to answer for especially because a day before Gucci’s show, he had made a statement, “Being in an industry with significant social and cultural influence, we have the opportunity and responsibility to lead by example.” Well, the Milan fashion show will go down in history as a missed opportunity.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 27, 2018 10:36 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).