Mango apologises for ‘slave style’ necklace

Spanish fashion retailer Mango has apologised via its Twitter feed for a necklace advertised on its French website as ‘slave style’ after it caused outrage among its customers. The retailer said that the gold necklace, which was advertised as

‘estilo esclavo’ (slave style), was a translation error and took to its official Twitter to say that they regretted the mistake.

“We regret the translation error,” Mango responded to one of its Twitter followers. “The relevant services have been alerted and will make the correction immediately.”

The apology followed an online petition initiated by French actresses Aissa Maiga, former Miss France, Sonia Rolland and columnist Rokkaya Diallo, entitled ‘Slavery is not fashion’ on the website Change.org.

Even though the retailer has now ‘cleaned’ its French e-commerce site to remove all mentions of the word ‘slave’, the online petition is asking for a complete withdrawal of all the jewellery stating:  “These jewels are made up of chains of slavery supposed to be an object of fantasy and fashion”.

In just a few days the petition had attracted more than 7,000 signatures, and people on Twitter were airing their frustration with a #BoycottMango hashtag that was trending last night on the site.

Image: Mango via the ‘Slavery is not fashion!’ petition