• Prada has apologized following widespread criticism of a new store campaign which appears to use blackface.
• According to The Independent, several figurines, which allegedly featured “black people, with dark skin and large, red lips,” were spotted by lawyer Chinyere Ezie as she passed by Prada’s Soho store in New York this week.
• After Ezie’s complaints went viral, Prada released a statement via Twitter apologizing, saying that the “Prada Group abhors racist imagery.”

This week, Prada has issued an apology for some imagery featured in one of its recent campaigns.

Taking to Facebook on Thursday, lawyer Chinyere Ezie wrote, “I don’t make a lot of public posts, but right now I’m shaking with anger. Today after returning to NYC after a very emotional visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American history and Culture including an exhibit on blackface, I walked past Prada’s Soho storefront only to be confronted with the very same racist and denigrating #blackface imagery.”

Ezie then spoke about how, once inside the store, she found even more examples of the offensive imagery, and discussed the campaign with a member of staff. In her Facebook post, Ezie asked other people to get involved in asking the brand to remove the examples:

https://www.facebook.com/chinyereezie/posts/10102198924210054

 

Over two tweets, Prada apologized for the imagery, and vowed to remove any articles from its stores which had been construed as racist:

[1/2] #Prada Group abhors racist imagery. The Pradamalia are fantasy charms composed of elements of the Prada oeuvre. They are imaginary creatures not intended to have any reference to the real world and certainly not blackface.

— PRADA (@Prada) December 14, 2018

[2/] #Prada Group never had the intention of offending anyone and we abhor all forms of racism and racist imagery. In this interest we will withdraw the characters in question from display and circulation.

— PRADA (@Prada) December 14, 2018

BAZAAR.com reached out to Prada for further comment.

From: Harper’s BAZAAR US