Major Fashion Faux Pas

Singer and actress Yang Mi cancelled her endorsement contract with Versace

Fashion brands in Europe and the United States, who depend a lot on the mainland market for sales really don't know their customers, in particular the geographical area where they come from.

Versace, Givenchy, and Coach somehow all had the same brilliant idea of printing T-shirts with cities on the back, much like tour concert T-shirts. How did they all come up with the same idea that turned out to be a really bad one?

Coach and Versace T-shirts listing Hong Kong and Taiwan

In the case of the Versace T-shirt, they probably thought sales would go through the roof because they listed so many different cities like "Milan, Italy", "Beverly Hills, USA", and "Shanghai, China".

But when it comes to the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, they printed "Hong Kong, Hong Kong", and "Macau, Macao" as if they were countries.  In the case of Givenchy, Taipei was listed as "Taipei, Taiwan".

While Taiwan is separate from China (considered a democratic state, but a renegade province to China), how about not wading into the sovereignty issue at all and just print the names of the cities?

The result left 1.4 billion Chinese upset for sure and their Chinese brand ambassadors quickly quit these brands.

Model Liu Wen severed her ties with Coach

Donatella Versace, the brand's artistic director, apologized on Sunday for the "unfortunate error".

"Never have I wanted to disrespect China's national sovereignty, and this is why I wanted to personally apologize for such inaccuracy and for any distress that it might have caused," she said in a statement.

Wanting to distance herself from the fiasco, Chinese actress and singer Yang Mi terminated her contract with the Italian fashion brand.

In the case of Coach, Model Liu Wen was the New York fashion label's brand ambassador, and on Monday cancelled her endorsement deal.

"I apologize to everyone for the damage I have caused as a result of my less-careful choice of brand!" she exclaimed in a Weibo post that was 'liked' hundreds of thousands of times. "I love my motherland, and steadfastly safeguard China's sovereignty."

Boy band singer Jackson Yee quit his contract with Givenchy

Liu took the proactive step of apologizing before the government could step in and embark on a hate propaganda campaign on her.

Meanwhile, Chinese boy band idol Jackson Yee also stated on Weibo that he had severed ties with LVMH's Givenchy, after pictures of one of the brand's T-shirts listed Hong Kong and Taiwan as countries.

Why is this still happening after the gaffes made by Dolce & Gabbana, when they made commercial of a Chinese model look silly trying to eat a pizza with chopsticks?

These brands have hardly any understanding of their Asian market and the subtleties between the different countries and territories. It just proves they are making whatever they think the Chinese market wants without much thought of the implications of their design choices.

This model had to eat pizza with chopsticks for an ad

And they are putting Chinese models, singers, and actors/actresses in a difficult position, as most of the time they don't know what they are going to model until they arrive at the studio.

If international fashion brands want to continue catering to the Chinese market, they must have a crash course on contemporary Chinese history. Infuriating their biggest customer base is just not worth the risk.