‘50 Shades of White’: D&G’s Milan Fashion Week casting sparks backlash

What happened: D&G’s Fall 2026 menswear show backlash At Milan Men’s Fashion Week in January 2026, Dolce & Gabbana unveiled its Fall 2026 menswear show titled “The Portrait of Man.” The stated intent was lofty: a tribute to the singular identity of every man. The execution, however, told a different story. The runway featured an entirely white cast of models — largely uniform in look, many with similar beards — prompting swift backlash across fashion media and social platforms. Supermodel Bella Hadid publicly criticised the casting decision, calling it “shocking and embarrassing,” and accused the brand of perpetuating a long-standing pattern of racial discrimination, misogyny, xenophobia, and exclusion. Fashion commentators amplified the critique. Elias Medini (@ly.as) shared backstage footage of the model board, describing it as “50 shades of white,” questioning the audacity of invoking universality while erasing visible diversity. His post drew hundreds of thousands of likes, with broad support in the comments. The incident reopened scrutiny of Dolce & Gabbana’s historical controversies around race and cultural representation, suggesting that this was not an isolated misstep, but a flashpoint in a longer-running values debate. The Jing Take: Prada rejects the ivory tower The controversy surrounding Dolce & Gabbana stood in stark contrast to another defining moment of Milan menswear week. At Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons delivered a Fall 2026 collection grounded in discomfort, questioning, and what they describe as “evolution without erasure.” Backstage, Simons rejected the idea of creative detachment. “You cannot be in an ivory tower and not look around,” he said, emphasizing that fashion cannot meaningfully separate itself from social and political realities. Prada echoed that uncertainty, framing the present as a moment defined less by answers than by difficult choices about what to preserve and what to transform. How Chinese fashion audiences interpreted Prada’s collection On Weibo, Chinese fashion commentators read Prada’s collection as a quiet but pointed response to an anxious era. @FeixiFeixi describes the show as “a quiet storm,” noting that while it appeared clean and disciplined on the surface, it carried “an old-school punk spirit underneath.” @Fashion_BangZ interpreted the collection as being anchored in “universal human values,” arguing that Prada used discomfort and imperfection to explore inheritance and renewal rather than nostalgia. Meanwhile, @Kingsley_Min focused on the designers’ core philosophy, writing that “‘evolution without erasure’ means new creativity always echoes collective memory,” and that real progress comes not from clearing the past, but from transforming it. Why casting has become a credibility test for global luxury brands The contrast between the two Milan shows highlights how differently luxury houses are navigating a complex cultural moment. Dolce & Gabbana and Prada offered distinct interpretations of masculinity and authorship, shaped by divergent assumptions about what fashion should reflect — continuity, provocation, or social context. In 2026, inclusivity is less about overt statements than about alignment. Casting, like design, functions as a form of communication, and audiences increasingly assess brands on the consistency between declared intent and visual execution. When a collection positions itself as universal, the choices made on the runway inevitably inform how that claim is received. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

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‘50 Shades of White’: D&G’s Milan Fashion Week casting sparks backlash