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Italian label Prada said it would remove animal-themed keychains from stores after receiving criticism online that it depicted racist imagery reminiscent of Blackface.
The luxury brand featured trinkets that featured a brown monkey with large, red lips, called “Otto Toto.” The keychains were part of the Prada’s “Pradamalia” collection, according to Fashionista.com.
A lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, Chinyere Ezie, noticed the items at a Prada store in New York City she wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
“Today after returning to NYC after a very emotional visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture including an exhibit on blackface, I walked past Prada’s Soho storefront only to be confronted with the very same racist and denigrating #blackface imagery,” she wrote. “History cannot continue to repeat itself. Black America deserves better. And we demand better.”
Prada responded to the controversy, writing on Twitter that it detests racism and that the items would be removed.
“#Prada Group abhors racist imagery. The Pradamalia are fantasy charms composed of elements of the Prada oeuvre,” the brand wrote on Twitter on Friday.
[1/2] #Prada Group abhors racist imagery. The Pradamalia are fantasy charms composed of elements of the Prada oeuvre. They are imaginary creatures not intended to have any reference to the real world and certainly not blackface.
— PRADA (@Prada) December 14, 2018
[2/] #Prada Group never had the intention of offending anyone and we abhor all forms of racism and racist imagery. In this interest we will withdraw the characters in question from display and circulation.
— PRADA (@Prada) December 14, 2018
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