The latest major fashion snafu was committed by this month’s edition of Italian Vogue and their slave earring article. The article was supposed to be a trend story on hoop earrings but the headline reads “Slave Earrings” with an image of a model wearing the circular jewelry and text that reads: “If the name brings to the mind the decorative traditions of the women of colour who were brought to the southern United States during the slave trade, the latest interpretation is pure freedom.”
Slavery is never in fashion and to prove things are still alightly amiss, the apology given by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani published said..
“We apologize for the inconvenience. It is a matter of really bad translation from Italian into English,”
I didn’t realize that slavery was purely an inconvenience…. While the translation from Italian to English was one of the reasons given for the snafu, it seems to go beyond that. The haphazard apology and finally pulling the article after a full day just shows that indeed [Italian] fashion may still be oblivious to the last 400 years or so.
