Marc Jacobs has found himself in the middle of a racially charged firestorm after being accused of cultural appropriation when he sent the models for his Spring/Summer 2017 fashion show down the runway in faux locs — and failed to credit anyone Black or anything associated with Black culture as inspiration.
This epic fail was unsurprisingly met with heated criticism that ranged from questioning why Jacobs didn’t just use black models with their own natural locs and calling for a boycott of the luxury designer. While the tweets and comments rolled in, we all were patiently waiting for Jacobs and his head hairstylist Guido Palau to issue a heartfelt apology.
But sadly the public censure fell on deaf ears, because Jacobs decided to respond to the backlash with a level of ignorance we could not have imagined. That moment came via an Instagram comment that Jacobs left on one of his critic’s photos:
There are so many things wrong with this. The fact that Jacobs is comparing a texture of hair to a hairstyle that is undoubtedly tied to an ethnicity and culture is extremely ignorant. In addition, his blind disregard for the origins of locs is futher proof that the backlash he is facing is warranted.
And this pretty much sums up how we feel about the situation:
At this point there has been no official statement released, but if this communication via Jacobs’ Instagram comment is real then he has a lot more explaining and apologizing to do.