Can fashion and history blend well together?
Perhaps it would be a bad mix if the dress flaunts one of the darkest moments in the history of humanity where hundreds of thousands of people were massacred.
American fashion retail giant Nordstrom marketed a hoodie with an enlarged photograph of an actual scene during the Nanjing Massacre on its back, earning the ire of people, majority of which are of Chinese descent, reported online magazine NextShark.
The sold out “HAPPINESS - Andrea Hoodie” was exclusively made available through the company’s online store Nordstrom Rack. The long-sleeved zip hoodie--originally priced at $190--retailed at $35.63-$47.50 each.
Andrea Marcaccini, a 6-foot-2-inch blue-eyed model, designed the controversial Nordstrom hoodie.
The heavily tattooed model’s creation does not sit well with everyone, such as with a California-based software engineer.
Originally from Nanjing, China, Tianheng Chen called the attention of Nordstrom on Facebook and demanded an explanation on Nov. 11.
One of his two posts pertaining to the hoodie reads: “Whoever designs and sells this Andrea Hoodie, please recall all products and apologize! How dare you print a such [sic] picture on [the] back of your hoodie!”
Sean Peng, CEO and founder of Inspirare, a San Francisco-based online fashion magazine, commented: “This is not art. Don’t mix art with war and politics in such a narrow minded way.”
“I’ve worked with hundreds of emerging designers from over twenty countries. We both know this cannot be called design, nor art,” Peng added.
Marcaccini apologized and explained his side through Facebook and Instagram--the latter with 113,000 followers--on Nov. 12: “I’d like to apologize with [sic] [the] Chinese community if I may have hurt anyone’s feeling with this post but this picture is actually against war and indifference ("why indifference?" is in fact the title for it).”
He continued: “No one ever speaks of that event (china massacre) in the Western world. It is not meant to be offensive in any way, on the contrary it’s a protest against the bigoted and narrow-minded people. This is a demur kind of art, not a [sic] insult!”
Beijing-born Peach Tao, an accomplished printmaking artist and illustrator now living in New York, reacted to Marcaccini’s post.
Tao wrote: “In the art world, subjectivity from the perspective of the artist is very important. However, regarding this piece, when being sold as a Commercial Merchandise, without ANY context, (not to mention the hoodie covered the words “Why indifference”) in a department store to the masses. The context is extremely important. Without it, it opens opportunities to a lot of misunderstanding, misuse, and is insensitive.”
For Marcaccini’s “indifference,” senior cloud architect at GE Digital and Wuhan University alumnus Haitao Jiang said, “Go read some history! Shame on you!”
Preceding World War II, the Nanjing Massacre aka Rape of Nanking (Dec. 1937-Jan. 1938) happened during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
On Dec. 13, 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army seized Nanjing (Nanking), the present-day capital of Jiangsu Province, and for the next six to eight weeks, according to various history books, engaged in mass killings.
At the 28,000-square meter Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Jiangdongmen, Nanjing, it is indicated that the Japanese massacre of Nanjing resulted to 300,000 victims.
In 2015, UNESCO inscribed the Nanjing Massacre in the Memory of the World Register.
Nordstrom Rack no longer features the Andrea Hoodie on its site.
“I hope Nordstrom and you [Marcaccini] learn from this experience,” said Tao.
Clayton Tang from New York posted a thought-provoking question:
“What's next? An artistic t-shirt of a smiling Hitler in front of a gas chamber with dead Jews in the background?”