What Luxury Brands Can Learn From Looting

This weekend, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, cities across the United States erupted with protests against systematic police aggression—portions of which damaged a number of businesses, including designer stores. After sitting dormant (and even boarded up) for nearly two months following the pandemic-mandated shutdown of nonessential businesses, major luxury retail thoroughfares, from New York’s Soho to Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive to Atlanta’s Phipps Plaza, are now covered in messages in support of Black Lives Matter and against the use of violent force by police. Many stores, both luxury and independent, have been looted, and left with windows smashed and merchandise stolen.

Designers and brands have spent the past four years trying to distinguish, with varying degrees of success, the difference between tepid support for social justice issues and true activism. The realities of looted stores and calls from consumers to speak out and do better have now brought many of those figures to a crossroads, including some who woke up Saturday and Sunday to news that their own stores had been vandalized. A number of writers, journalists, and activists have long sought to contextualize looting, but it remains a divisive issue. In the fashion industry, that is no exception.

Only a handful of designers and industry leaders have expressed support—tacit or overt—of the looting. Chris Gibbs, founder of the influential Los Angeles menswear store Union, posted his gratitude for messages about his store’s wellbeing on Instagram on Sunday, though emphasized, “But what I want people to remember is that the Genesis of this whole thing is that police are killing black people!!! Please don’t let the looting side show that’s going on distract your attention from the main stage, the main conversation we need to keep at the forefront.” On Sunday afternoon, after his ivy-bearded Melrose Place store was looted, Marc Jacobs posted to both his brand’s account and his personal account the image of his store’s sign, with his logo crossed out by protestors and the names of Sandra Bland, who was found hanged in a Texas jail cell in 2015 three days after being arrested for a traffic stop, and George Floyd written above and below. A few hours before, Jacobs posted another message of solidarity on his personal account: “NEVER let them convince you that broken glass or property is violence,” it read. “HUNGER is VIOLENCE. HOMELESSNESS is VIOLENCE…. Property can be replaced, human lives CANNOT.” Some commenters challenged Jacobs: “Are you crazy or what? What if they destroyed your stores?” Jacobs has replied to a number of critics, confirming that his store was looted and the posts would stay up. In large part, followers seem to support his messages.

But some of those expressions have been met with anger or skepticism. On Sunday morning, fashion historian Shelby Ivey Christie shared images of looted luxury stores on Rodeo Drive, commenting that “I can just see this being exploited as an ‘aesthetic’ in their campaigns to come.” A few hours later, she wrote of Jacobs’s post, “It’s started.” As Pyer Moss designer Kerby Jean-Raymond put it on Saturday afternoon, meaningful change will require more than social media engagement: “Not one of these companies have committed to any action. Commit to no longer working with the police. Commit to lending your in-house legal teams to reform these laws that cost us Black lives. No more stupid words with shit typeface.”

On the other end of the spectrum is Off-White designer and Louis Vuitton menswear artistic director Virgil Abloh, whose social media posts about the protests have been met with immense criticism. (As of Monday afternoon, his name was trending on Twitter.) Sharing images of the graffitied and looted Hollywood outpost of Round Two, the secondhand streetwear store co-founded by Sean Wotherspoon, Abloh wrote that the destruction of the store went against his definition of streetwear, which he believes has disappeared: “a group of friends that I’m surely was [sic] like, ‘C’mon guys, this is Sean’s store, we can’t treat him like this, we know Sean.” (Abloh was referencing an interview he gave to Dazed at the end of 2019 prophesying the end of the subculture he helped propel to international, high-fashion renown. Wotherspoon, who originally posted the images that Abloh shared to his story, was also criticized for posting images of his store but no messages of support for the protestors, though he appears to have responded to several commenters that he’s less worried about the store than he is about the unequal treatment of black Americans by police.) In a subsequent story, Abloh wrote that “if me and my friends tried to loot Alife, Supreme, aNYthing, Prohibit, Union etc. i would foresee a 40oz bottle hurtling at my head along with it”—a gesture toward the tight-knit streetwear community of his youth, maybe, but one that seemed to ignore the fact that the activists marching over the past six days have been exposed to much more serious violence, like pepper spray and rubber bullets, at the hands of police.

But most incendiary to fashion and streetwear observers on social media was what followed: Abloh posted a swipe-up to donate to bail funds for activists, along with a screenshot of a receipt for a $50 donation to (F)EMPOWER, a Miami-based feminist activist group raising money for jailed protesters among other causes: “for kids in the streets that need a bail funds [sic] for George Floyd protests,” Abloh wrote. (Bail prices vary, but the head of the Minnesota Freedom Fund said last week that prices there are approaching $1000, and one man charged with rioting and disorderly conduct while protesting the death of Freddie Gray in 2015 was charged $250,000.) Writer Ira Madison, model Duckie Thot, and comedian Zack Fox, among others, have tweeted messages criticizing Abloh, the head of two global luxury brands, for the paltry size of the donation. An image circulated on Twitter Monday afternoon of another Abloh Instagram story clarifying “a narrative form[ing] around false assumptions ~ around the donation,” stating that the $50 did not comprise the totality of money he has donated—though that story appears to have been deleted. In a statement posted to Instagram after this story was published, Abloh apologized, and clarified his position: "I want people to know that I am participating in this movement from A-Z," he wrote. That means monetarily, too: he noted that the $50 he gave to a Miami bail fund was part of more than $20,000 he's given to bail funds and other organizations.

For Abloh’s friend and collaborator Don C, the Chicago streetwear designer, the protests have led to introspection about his role in hype culture that may have motivated the looters. He expressed admiration for the diversity of the protestors, writing, “I’m not sure what the cause is but they were clearly revolting the system.” He wondered whether the looters “think they are doing the right thing by risking their lives stealing from me??? If they are sincere and this is the case I forgive and it brings me joy if they are now truely [sic] happy.” A few minutes later, he acknowledged his own culpability in the marketing around sneakers and streetwear, stating, “I post material things that influence these undeveloped brains to covet and this is wrong… I need to post content that promotes love, empathy, wisdom, understanding, honor, respect.”

Underlying these moments of individual participation is an uncomfortable truth: the fashion industry has long relied on black customers and celebrities to buy and promote their products—a reliance too rarely reflected in the corporate and design offices of those businesses, or on the runways and advertisements that promote them. Over just the past 15 months, brands including Gucci, Prada, and Burberry have had to apologize for racially insensitive designs, and the New York City Commission on Human Rights reached a settlement with Prada earlier this year after an investigation into a monkey keychain that resembled racist caricatures. The activism of the past week is laying bare long-ignored realities about the way that the fashion industry relies on black consumers without showing up for them in turn.

Indeed, more broadly, the rapid global expansion of conglomerates and streetwear over the past decade has created a crisis of seductive consumerism that has affected nearly every person with a little expendable income under the age of 40. In that context, we might consider looting an inevitable result of a behemoth marketing machine that promotes the positive idea that luxury goods are for everyone, along with the more insidious insistence that everyone must have them.

This challenge is painfully at odds with the quickness with which the industry has promoted its contributions, monetary and otherwise, to causes like sustainability and the fight against coronavirus. It’s also underscored the gap designers have created between social activism on the runway and off: Jonathan Anderson, who presented an emotional Fall 2020 collection that used the art of artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz, posted a message on Instagram Sunday that “there is only one race,” before deleting it and offering an apology with a more appropriate message of support. Brands have spent years claiming more political identities; now they are struggling to deliver on them. (Though as one Twitter user pointed out, an activism aesthetic isn’t necessarily impossible: iconoclastic activist-designer Vivienne Westwood probably loves what has happened to her store.)

Not all brands are failing to act, of course. Noah, the streetwear brand started by former Supreme creative director Brendon Babenzien, posted emotional notes of support on Saturday from Babenzien and his wife Estelle, and directed customers to resources on anti-racism education and organizations to donate to. The influential millennial makeup brand Glossier committed a whopping $1 million on Saturday: half a million dollars to organizations fighting racial injustice, and another half a million dollars that will be invested in black-owned beauty businesses. Aurora James, the designer of the brand Brother Vellies, challenged her followers to shop 15% black businesses: “We represent 15% of the population and we need to represent 15% of your shelf space.” On Monday, James created a separate Instagram account for the pledge, and a number of designers, including Emily Adams Bode, have already expressed their support.

Along with and thanks to the rise of social media, the fashion industry has bled into pop culture over the past decade: brands seem more present in our lives than ever before, yet have more control over their message. What we are seeing is what happens when customers wrest back that control, and hold the designers accountable for the movements with which they align themselves. While brands have been vocal about the pain and frustration of the past four years, many have limited their activism to fine-tuned messages released via social media, or in carefully calibrated press releases in support of sustainability, diversity, feminism, and even protesting itself, as one Chanel collection was themed in 2015. It’s disappointing to see how ill-informed many designers are, especially when they rely on incredibly well-informed consumers to prop up their businesses by buying less expensive, logo-covered products. (It’s worth considering that Tumblr, the erstwhile millennial and Gen Z blogging platform of choice, helped popularize both the archival fashion movement and the phrase “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.”) Just as designers finally took the coronavirus as an opportunity to reevaluate how much they created and how often, designers, particularly those who are struggling to react to the crisis, need to ask themselves: have they really made room for people of color? And if they haven’t, when are they going to start?

Originally Appeared on GQ