Cover Photo: Courtesy of Jason Lloyd-Evans
Stars, celebrities and VIPs landed in Shanghai for what would have been the biggest show ever created for Dolce & Gabbana. The one hour show, featuring 300 looks, was cancelled hours before it was scheduled to start
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Above Photo: Courtesy of Jason Lloyd-Evans

The show was originally scheduled to take place at 9pm at the Shanghai Expo World Museum, and would have been a combination of three locations. Each 100-look show from Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou would have been merged together for this 300-look show, which cost the brand upwards of US$25 million to conceive. VIPs and press were also flown in from around the region, with an expected 1,500 in attendance.

The show itself took a team of hundreds to coordinate, assemble and build. The setup of the stages started as early as November 15, with event teams from around the region and Milan landing in Shanghai as early as three weeks ago. Fittings with the models, celebrities and talents for the show had been taking place in the past few days leading up to the show.

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Diet Prada, an Instagram account that regularly polices the fashion industry and calls out bad behaviour, was the first to break the news revealing messages that had been written Stefano Gabbana defaming China and its citizens.

Shortly after, another incident occurred, but from the Dolce & Gabbana officials page. These were ultimately spread on WeChat, Weibo and other China social media platforms which became viral within a matter of hours.

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Dolce and Gabbana took to Weibo six hours before the show time and announced that the Cultural Bureau of Shanghai cancelled the show. 

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Above Photo: Courtesy of instagram.com/elly

Two Hong Kong society faces, Jonathan Cheung and Elly Lam had flown to Shanghai to walk the show. Other notable faces that were supposed to hit the runway included legendary actress Sophia Loren, model Eva Herzegova, Lucky Blue Smith and Cameron Dallas.

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Above Photo: Courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana

The collection that would have been shown was completely new and never shown before. It was described as “a collection that represents the Italian culture with a hint of Chinese elements in customized ways,” according to the press release.

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Above Photo: Courtesy of Jason Lloyd-Evans

When news broke of Gabbana’s racist rants on the morning of the show, many celebrities and models were already at the dress rehearsal. An insider revealed that Bao Bao Wan, who was supposed to be one of the opening acts of the show, was the first to walk out of the rehearsal in protest.

Other celebrities that have publicly denounced the brand’s China ambassadors include Zhang ZiYi, Li BingBing, Kun Chen, and Huang XiaoMing. While model agencies such as Bentley issued official statements saying their models would refused to walk the show.

While the news broke on Instagram, the Chinese community took to Weibo and Wechat to further comment on the brand’s action. Some former fans of the brand have taken further steps to show their disagreement by uploading videos on Weibo cutting up their Dolce and Gabbana clothing and burning their sneakers.

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Above Photo: Courtesy of Jason Lloyd-Evans

There are rumours that police arrived to the Shanghai Expo Centre yesterday and seized passports of the teams working on the project, and were later escorted back to their hotels. Stefano and Domenico may have also been questioned by the police.

There were also rumors that some members of the Dolce & Gabbana China press team have resigned after seeing the designer’s messages online.

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