As you all already know, it’s officially lawn season!
One very popular clothing brand, Sana Safinaz has just released their 2018 Lawn campaign and wow, they messed up.
The company has taken a hundred steps back with their offensive new campaign and the exploitation is derogatory.
The campaign shows models in their designer lawn suits roaming around Kenya. Sounds completely fine right? Nope. The brand posted mortifying pictures portraying the African tribes as submissive “accessories” and the background for racist, elitist values. The brand must realize that the African people are not props nor should they be exploited in order for them to sell overpriced clothing.
It’s crazy that in a day and age where brands are raising awareness for social causes such as the treatment of transgenders and women empowerment – this leading brand has done the opposite and used their platform to regurgitate oppression. This campaign just goes to show how racism and classism still exist in South Asia. It’s 2018, we need to be better and do better for our community.
This image where an African man is holding an umbrella over model is disgusting, offensive, and completely unnecessary. It’s incredibly demeaning to use different races and their cultures as a backdrop for a luxury clothing ad.
Sana Safinaz has been deleting pictures one by one from their Instagram and Facebook pages and haven’t addressed the backlash nor given a statement or apology.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that Sana Safinaz has faced controversy for their poor campaign choices.
In this 2012 lawn campaign, the brand was stormed with angry comments for glorifying the gap between rich and poor in Pakistan. The campaign had images of men clad in the orange and scarlet uniform of railway porters, carrying luxury luggage for the models worth hundreds of thousands of rupees.
People on social media are very angry with the new campaign, as they should be.
Everyone agreed that this was NOT okay
Everyone is also asking who came up with this horrendous campaign?
Apparently, the brand thinks that racism sells
sana safinaz a large pakistani clothing brand using native africans and their culture as props. yall still want to tell me the deep rooted racism in pakistan is not there? try again pic.twitter.com/jBEZUshAUY
— sosun (@sosunm) March 7, 2018
Some people even thought that it was humorous and photoshopped their own pictures
What did you all think about this distasteful campaign?
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cover image source: Sana Safinaz/ Instagram