Dolce & Gabbana cast a string of millennial influencers to take part in their SS18 show for Men’s Fashion Week. One stepping on their Milan runway was artist Raury—who was determined to leave an impact.
D&G has been soaking in controversy recently, given their acceptance of Melania Trump’s consumership to the Italian brand. Critics and anti-Donald Trump advocates then added D&G to the list of brands they would no longer buy from. However, like D&G has done with past controversies, the brand poked fun at their own criticism—this time with campaign “Boycott Dolce & Gabbana.”
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As you might have guessed, $250 T-shirts playing on boycotting caught as much heat as Pepsi’s infamous ad starring Kendall Jenner—D&G’s social media comments being flooded with words like “dumb,” “ignorant” and “offensive.” And when Raury was brought to model on the #DGMillennials runway, he wasn’t going to join in on D&G’s joke. He was going to protest D&G for real. According to Vogue, he ripped off his yellow hoodie during the finale and bared his chest with phrases “GIVE ME FREEDOM” and “I AM NOT YOUR SCAPEGOAT” written across it.
Days before his catwalk appearance, Raury chatted with GQ about his pre-planned protest. He noted that he did not know about the brand’s allegiance to Melania Trump until recently, and some of his fellow influencers did not know at all. Yet he predicted that the influencers would take the fall–D&G’s “scapegoats.
“Me, as a young man from Stone Mountain, Georgia, the birthplace of the Klu Klux Klan, I really felt this mockery of boycotting,” he said. “Who knows, if boycotts didn’t happen, if Rosa Parks and M.L.K. didn’t step up…who knows if I would even exist. Boycotting matters. Boycotting is real”
