14 DAY TRIAL // The celebrate the reopening of the house’s Shanghai flagship store, Christian Dior commissioned a series of portraits called “Shanghai Dreamers.” Shot by famed photographer Quentin Shih, they’re smack in the middle of a race controversy.
The photos, two of which you can also see attached to the article, show one Caucasian model standing tall over rows and rows of identical Chinese.
In fact, not only the Chinese identical, they’re actually the one and same person replicated over and over again, as LemonDrop points out in a recent post in defense of the new shots.
The groups of Chinese people are also dressed in the same uniform, which makes the photos even more disconcerting, while also making the model decked in tight Dior clothing stand out even more.
The message of the shots is, according to many, that Chinese all look the same and there’s really no way of telling them apart unless if you dress them in Dior.
They also hint that the Chinese are still stuck in the past (all their clothes in the photos date back to the ‘70s), while Dior comes to bring innovation, class and timeless elegance.
Faced with accusations of racism, Shih is speaking up to take full responsibility: the idea for the campaign was his and he was given full liberty about the theme and, most importantly, which models to choose.
Moreover, he says, it could very well be that people who see in the new ads hints of racism are not looking at them in the right light, because Shih’s intention was never to offend.
Quite on the contrary, he says, as cited by the same fashion e-zine.
“This is a personal project that only represents my point of view. An ad campaign represents the point of view of Dior,” Shih says, explaining how this is not a campaign in the truest sense, but only a series of photos.
“I wanted to show the power of Chinese people standing together and a kind of socialism in Chinese history (only in Chinese history not China now). The Chinese models are not people. They are symbols of Chinese history between the 1960s and 1980s,” the photographer goes on to say.
“Dior provided me an opportunity to photograph the models they used for their haute couture show in Paris. I selected eight models according to how their wardrobes matched my uniform color palettes,” Shih further explains.
Even with that, critics are not happy. Granted, big fashion houses will always court controversy because that’s the best manner to attract attention onto themselves, but using “old-school racism” (as the Guardian calls it) to do so is outrageous, especially for a house as prestigious as Dior is.
