Louis Vuitton under fire for $705 ‘keffiyeh-inspired’ scarf
Fashion house Louis Vuitton has come under fire for marketing a $705 scarf heavily influenced by the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh.
On its US website, the label offers a blue, jacquard-woven stole decorated with both the Vuitton monogram design and the distinctive checked pattern of the traditional keffiyeh.
The scarf is priced at $705.
Louis Vuitton describes the scarf on its website as being “inspired by the classic keffiyeh and enriched with House signatures”.
The company says that the scarf, made from wool, cotton and silk, is lightweight and soft, and that it “creates an easygoing mood”.
The keffiyeh is a headscarf traditionally worn by Levantine farmers and Bedouin, and in the past century has come to symbolise Palestinian resistance against colonialism and Israeli occupation.
While a number of social media activists have accused the fashion house of insensitivity with regard to the timing of the release of the product, it is not immediately clear when the keffiyeh-influenced design was first put on sale.
Diet Prada, a popular Instagram account that seeks to expose wrongdoings in the fashion world, called out the designer in a post on Tuesday shared with its 2.7 million followers.
The post included several photos of the traditional keffiyeh beside the Louis Vuitton stole. “So LVMH’s stance on politics is ‘neutral,’ but they’re still making a $705 logo-emblazoned keffiyeh, which is a traditional Arab headdress that’s become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism,” it said. “Hmmmm…”
The caption alluded to a statement sent to Diet Prada on May 21 after the model Bella Hadid posted about Palestinian causes on her Instagram account.
Diet Prada quoted a source associated with LVMH as saying, “LVMH’s stance on politics is neutral, but they are not cancelling Bella’s contract.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, about 100,000 people had liked Diet Prada’s post about the stole.
Khaled Beydoun, an author, scholar, and lawyer, criticized the scarf as “disrespectful” in an Instagram post on Tuesday.
“Let me be clear, companies and designers like @virgilabloh have the right to make whatever they want to make within the bounds of legality,” Beydoun wrote, speaking of the brand’s artistic director, Virgil Abloh.
“I typically champion artistry and the freedom that comes with it,” Beydoun wrote. “But this is patently disrespectful and insensitive, on a myriad of levels.”
“Especially right now. Amid 11 days of bombings, land dispossession and 215 Palestinians killed,” he continued.
19 families in the Gaza Strip have been wiped off the population civil registry during Israel’s 11-day aggression, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, including 41 children and 25 women.
Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip started on May 10 and ended with a ceasefire brokered by mediator Egypt on May 21, killing at least 279 Palestinians, including 69 children and 40 women and injuring 1,910 others.
More than 90,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and much of Gaza’s infrastructure and many residential buildings were completely destroyed or levelled.
Beydoun also suggested that Louis Vuitton’s color choices could have been a way of nodding to Israel’s flag and taking a political stance.
“The blue and white colors are either tone deaf or an insidious form of passive political commentary. Or a disastrous attempt at political irony,” he wrote in the post, which had over 61,000 likes on Wednesday.
