Marni

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Marni logo

Marni is a luxury Italian fashion house founded by Consuelo Castiglioni in 1994. It is known worldwide for its ready-to-wear collections and accessories for women, men and children. [1]

Controversial campaign

In July 2020 Marni released a campaign named “Flip Flops, Precious Details and Jungle Mood SS20”, which ended up to be a concerning campaign. There are a few Black models in Marni's ad, caught with a lot of problematic comments, as the public takes a deeper dive at them. Soon after the campaigns are posted on Instagram, a fashion watchdog Instagram group, Diet Prada, called out Marni directly for the troublesome statements in their photographs, involving ethnic items and some insensitive props usage.

Marni being called out by Diet Prada on Instagram

For their spring/summer 2020 collection, Marni was attacked online for the demeaning and colonialist images used. [2]

On the campaign, there are some images which depict the models wearing a series of ‘ethnic’ items including woven grass hats, chunky wooden Bayong necklaces, and piles of bangles – none of which, noted DP, form part of the Italian label’s latest collection. A black model is photographed elsewhere, with a large wooden tote bag with large chains near its feet, which looks a lot like shackles at a glance.

The fact that they also featured the statements “Jungle mood”, “Barefoot in the jungle”, and “Tribal amulet” to finish the whole campaign thing off, at first, seemingly intended to show the mere flip-flop campaign’s mood, but instead, it serves to reinforce arhaic racist and colonial stereotypes. .[3]

Behind the campaign

To everyone’s surprise, an Afro-Brazillian photographer, Edgar Azevedo was behind the lens of this campaign, which he collaborated with Giovanni Bianco, a Brazilian-Italian art director. Audiences were wondering, was something lost in translation? More elaboration on the partnership could have been offered by Marni, which could hypothetically minimize the critics that grew due to this campaign. But all in all, the damage has been done when Marni’s marketing team has decided to put up those words.

Black people have been deprived of their human right through this sort of insensitive campaign, which says a lot about the institution of white supremacy. After the huge backlash, Marni deleted all posts relating to the campaign and Marni’s creative director, Francesco Risso, posted an apology to his Instagram. He mentioned that their intended purpose was to capture the beauty of Azevedo’s (the photographer) community, but he admitted that Marni failed to adequately do so in a respectful and thoughtful way.

References

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