I never thought the day would come where I’d have to come to Gucci and Ryan Gosling’s defense, but here we are.
Gucci recently released a two minute video of a very hungry and dapper Ryan Gosling going on a long journey surrounded by millions of dollars’ worth of their new Gucci Valigeria luggage collection. (I don’t know what’s new about it. Literally looks identical to every other Gucci bag. They can only do so much with this one pattern and color scheme but what do I know, I’m poor.)
None of it made sense and it wasn’t trying to. It’s a high end brand that banks on being over the top and melodramatic, like perfume commercials where a beautiful celebrity rides on horseback into a hot air balloon wearing a ball gown and whispering something in French. (This sounds like it’s definitely happened.)
With that said, it was better than The Notebook.
The flamboyant and totally unrelatable ad brought up a lot of important issues that are worth a deep and thorough analysis. Like is American consumerism contributing to the depletion of natural resources? Is the constant pursuit of affluence creating a society that is unequivocally detached from human empathy? But most importantly, is Ryan Gosling hot?
Is he? Or have we been manipulated by movies and his abs to believe he is? This is the question that keeps me up at night.
But that’s not the very legitimate argument the latest Gucci campaign has inspired.
Soon after it was released, the The Telegraph reported that the homelessness and human rights charity Positive Action in Housing found the ad had “Sickening similarities to the migrant crisis”.
“Only two days ago, 16 refugee women drowned off a Greek island trying to reach safety, among them were Afghans, Iranians, Yemeni … countries that are riven with war and persecution,” says the charity’s director, Robina Qureshi. “Here you have a white European model in overpriced fashion gear pushing overpriced suitcases worth probably 100 times a lifetime’s wages for one of the desperate people who drowned, who no one heard of.”
I hesitate to even bring this up because Qureshi is doing a lot for the refugee crisis. More than I ever have or will. I understand that working for a charity like this is emotionally and mentally overwhelming, but accusing Gucci of being insensitive to migrants is definitely reaching. Creating controversy where there isn’t any actually does a disservice to the very cause you’re claiming to care about and work for.
I arrived from Iran as a refugee on a plane.
I arrived in the United States from Iran as a refugee on a plane. No Gucci bags, unfortunately, so I don’t relate to that part. It was just me and my family and the Persian rugs my parents took careful measures to protect more than us. If I had dared to throw them willy-nilly into the back of a 80’s era pickup, my mom would have kicked me all the way back to the motherland. Despite my airborne refugee status, I’ve never taken offense at luxury airline ads. I didn’t see Snakes on a Plane and think they were mocking our struggle.
The very real migrant crisis and Ryan Gosling traveling through a $74k Gucci Savoy trunk to another dimension have nothing to do with each other.
There is absolutely no immigrant, even if they really did swim ashore to America, whose main concern is how they’re being portrayed by Ryan Gosling in an ad selling overpriced luggage. They have bigger problems when they land: housing, education, health care, employment and basically the day to day logistics of living in a new foreign country, not to mention navigating the grief of having had to leave their home in the first place.
They don’t have the means or the will to scroll on Twitter and see what’s trending with the latest celebrity. Some probably don’t have access to a computer to YouTube “Ryan Gosling looking hot af eating a hamburger in Gucci ad.” My dad didn’t even understand keyboards. He claimed his was broken because the alphabet was out of order. He died convinced I gave him my broken shitty old keyboard.
I speak for all of us when I say we give as many fucks about Gucci as Gucci does about migrants.
If you’re really outraged by the migrant crisis and want to help, get involved and do real work. Donate money to Positive Action in Housing or any number of other charities helping migrants, including HIAS that helped my family. Volunteer, vote, call your local representatives and complain, or, for a challenge of higher difficulty: read my mom her mail and explain what a ValPak is.
There’s a lot of things to be outraged about in the world. This thirst trap Gucci ad is not it and we shouldn’t have such high expectations from a brand that sells a $7,900 hat box.
I’m still not convinced I need any of it, but one thing Gucci has done is change my mind about Ryan Gosling. He’s been upgraded from “eh, he’s alright” to “kinda hot but let’s not push it.”
