French luxury label Balenciaga is the next huge brand to draw ire from the Chinese on Weibo after the launch of its new Chinese Valentine’s Day aka Qixi Festival bags on August 25.
Images of their new line of bags on the official Balenciaga online store on TMall (owned by Alibaba) did not please customers who said the bags were unattractive, gaudy and an insult to the Chinese people.
The new line of bags featured a limited edition bag design with Chinese characters ‘artfully’ splashed across the flap of the bag.
The Chinese characters reads:
I Love Me
He Loves Me
You Love Me
I Love You
A netizen voiced displeasure and accused the Balenciaga for implying that China’s fashion scene was behind the times.
The translated comment reads, “Balenciaga's Qixi limited-edition releases can't get any gaudier. Does the designer think that China's fashion scene is still stuck in the 2000s?”
The feelings of Chinese customers are understandably raw since another incident happened in a Balenciaga store in Paris two years ago.
In 2018, a Chinese tourist was manhandled in the brand’s Paris store. The incident prompted Chinese netizens to call for a boycott who called it an act of racial discrimination.
Balenciaga now joins another fashion house Dolce & Gabbana for inciting furore from its Chinese customers.
