Dior, please be respect to other culture
Christian Dior, the world-known luxury brand, launched a mid-length skirt in May 2022 under Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior’s Fall 2022 collection, described as “an iconic Dior silhouette.” However, Chinese netizens have noticed this style is highly overlapping the Chinese traditional Dress “Mamianqun” or “horse face skirt.”
Chinese netizens have started to post not only on Chinese social media, such as Weibo, Red, but also posting on Twitter, Tiktok. Gradually more and more drivers have more Chinese people’s attention. People are mad that it is not the iconic Dior Silhouette. They think it is a totally copy what Mamianqun’s design. Some other brands usually will give credit to what the original inspiration is from. One post about this topic on one of the biggest Chinese social media platforms reached 470 million views on July 18th, 2022. More and more Chinese people start to gather to protest the Dior, not only in Paris but also in other cities such as New York. As things ferment, Dior is not selling this skirt in the China area on their official website but still selling in other regions. Till now, Dior does not do anything to explain this situation.
Dior can definitely avoid this situation by not saying it is “an iconic Dior silhouette”. According to the design, it looks 80% similar design of course, and people will be mad on it. Dior did not try to face this crisis, not even say anything. I think it is their fault on it, because if they want to earn money, they have to respect their customers. Chinese people are one of the customers group in the world, they already speak in public about this issue, but they still remain shut up. Chinese people love their culture and are proud of their traditional culture. Not only Chinese, everyone loves on their own culture. Dior does not do anything, and more and more people start to follow this.
In my opinion, Dior has hurt their brand image in China. During that month period, more and more people posted their thoughts on social media to discuss this crisis. Even one of the Chinese government’s most credible newspaper agencies, People Daily, wrote an article about this. If Dior could apologize for this and clarify the original ideas from Mamianqun, will be so much better than keeping their mouth shut.
To be honest, When someone’s country’s culture is plagiarized without being marked, anyone will feel angry. Dior should learn from this, and other brands should pay attention and alert their designers.
