Gucci Blackface Product Scandal

Kloe Rhoden- Really Gucci?

        The luxury designer brand Gucci, based in Italy,  gave a lot to talk about theses last few weeks. Their new winter/fall line up seemed to feature a white model in black face, in a way not yet seen before; she was not wearing any makeup or giving us an over the top performance portraying
''the way black people act''. Blackface a devil of past ignorance, thought to be universally understood as a "no no", and left in the past alongside the steam engine and clean air.  Found new life in the form of a black sweater that extends past the neck and obstructs half the wearer's face, and features a mouth slit with a red ring around it. This is similar to the way black face has been historically painted in order to exaggerate the features of black people.
           This obviously caused many people to take to the virtual streets and voice their dismay. Which then prompted a public apology by the brand and a promise of improvement for the future.
Nothing new; this is the same thing that has been going on for several years now, right around the rise of social media. The list of brands that have caused controversy and then released a swift and cleverly worded apology in response to the masses they have offended, is innumerable and happens to often to be mere ignorance. I think it is important to take a step back and think critically of this online phenomena; after all, how many of these ''mistakes'' do companies have to commit in oder for them to put in place a system meant to prevent such thing, similar to the way a company has quality control for a product before it is released to the public. If we can understand the ways that brands benefit from our outrage, after all online business is a game of attention, and what grabs someone's attention more than something that offends them?
       I guess what I am saying is that brands understand that capitalizing on the attention outrage brings is legitimate business model, when all that is needed to repair the damage is a tweet.
After all is a person that is willing to drop $400 on a belt, going to be dissuaded from that decision
by a little racism? #STAYWOKE
This relates to history because, it goes all the way back to minstrel Shows used to mock and ridicule people of color. They exaggerated features of African Americans in order to create characters to deride people of color and the product previously mentioned shows strong parallels to that of the blackface seen in mistral shows. Thank you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/07/haute-couture-blackface-gucci-apologizes-pulls-racist-sweater/?utm_term=.ef192adb4f49T