A Chinese New Year campaign controversy: is Gucci fur-real?

Despite Kering going fur-free in 2021 and Gucci itself being a certified member of the Fur Free Alliance, the Italian luxury house’s Lunar New Year capsule included products made of rabbit felt. 

In addition to featuring a 100% rabbit felt hat, among other accessories, the collection was shot with real life bunnies—a move that was widely-critiqued as being in extremely poor taste. It was brought to the spotlight by activists including French filmmaker Rebecca Cappelli in various social media posts last week, consequently making it a viral case for concern.

Seeing as China accounts for around 35% of Gucci’s annual sales revenue (source: Barclays 2022), it’s beyond a rookie error. Gucci therefore opted to immediately, and quietly, pull all of the products in question.

The Jing Take: Prior to taking the products off shelves, Gucci initially argued that rabbit felt is not classed as fur, seeing as the animal skin is not actually attached to it. However, the production of felt is generally linked to unethical or cruel treatment of animals.

The most baffling part of this controversy is that this is the second year in a row that Gucci has come under scrutiny over its Lunar New Year activities. For the 2022 Year of the Tiger, the Italian luxury house incorporated real-life tigers in its advertising campaign, met by uproar from animal welfare organizations. The imagery ultimately portrayed the exotic mammal as a pet or luxury item, and was slammed for glorifying captive wild animals.

Somehow, it seems that this latest incident has largely flown under the radar of netizens in the mainland. Across Weibo, consumers seem more interested in Sabato De Sarno being the new creative director, or local actor Xiao Zhan acting as a brand ambassador (despite being appointed over a year ago, the hashtag #肖战Gucci品牌代言人# has 275,000 reads at the time of writing this). 

In order to avoid further backlash, the brand has scrubbed all of the Lunar New Year promotions from its social media platforms. Though, the clothing collection (sans rabbit felt) is still available to shop. A lesson in swerving unwanted noise, perhaps.