Tuesday 23 August 2011

Vogue Italia

Having read today that Italian Vogue have created a "salve" collection and displayed it on their website, i was shocked to say the least.
I thought we lived in a modern society, where talk of slaves were understood as a bad thing, and women have finally managed to break free from this captivity.
They said that the style was "slave" because this the style women wore during the African holocaust. They created gold/silver hoops like many women did, and are not only parading them in their magazine/on-line they seem to be proud of this collection! Of course the reaction has been big and many many people and organisations have spoken out and said how "disgusting" it was to create and sell such things.
Vogue has apologised and said that they have now changed the name to "Ethnic collection", because according to editor Franca Sozzani it was just bad translation from Italian to English.
Personally, I think "Ethnic" is still a poor choice of words and "slave" certainly does not translate to "ethnic". Its not much better, i dont see why they have to refer to this collection as ethnic or any sort of similar words, what will they think of next? I do not think Vogue intended to be racist or harmful in anyway , but they certainly didn't think it through did they?
Vogue is a respectable fashion magazine that thousands of women buy as a part of their daily routine, what kind of message are they sending out?
I really hope the apology draws a line under this whole mess, and Vogue think ahead before coming up with another offensive named collection!


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