I’m sure that everyone has seen or heard of the controversy Japanese fashion brand, Comme Des Garcons has caused with their choice of hairstyle at their men’s fall/winter 2020 fashion show during Paris Fashion Week.

The brand decided that the majority white model cast should wear braided lace front cornrow wigs to top off the looks. And to make things worse, the wigs were placed ‘dead’ in the middle of the model’s foreheads. The stylists didn’t even try to make the wigs look natural by tucking in all the hair and matching the hairline. So to many, this looks like blatant cultural appropriation. So of course people were quick to criticize this choice, which seemed to have no evident meaning behind it, other than mocking black culture. But after receiving backlash, The hairstylist, Julien d’Ys claims the styles were inspired by Egyptian princes.

“Dear all, My inspiration for the comme des garçons show was Egyptian prince A Look I found truly beautiful and inspirational,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “A look that was an hommage. Never was it my intention to hurt or offend anyone, ever. If I did I deeply apologize.”

What I”m curious to know is what made him make this choice being that there’s nothing in the collection that references Egyptian style. And if this was truly the case, then he may just have poor taste; because isn’t the point for the styling to be relevant to the overall feel of the collection? So in my opinion, Comme des Garcons deserves all of the backlash received. How are we supposed to appreciate the brand’s work with such a distracting publicity stunt? Unfortunately, due to the lack of diversity luxury fashion brands have to ensure that they aren’t promoting or supporting racists attitudes. And incidents as such only highlights this absence.

Anyone and everyone in & out of the fashion industry knows that the hairstyle is representative of black culture. It’s a hairstyle with a history of causing discrimination against black people. So why would you make fun of that? And I say “make fun” because it would be different if the wigs were properly placed; however, it was evident that they purposely weren’t. Therefore making it an offensive and tasteless publicity stunt. Talk about do anything for Clout!