So I'm sure you've heard by now, that MAC and Rodarte have paired up to bring out a collection inspired by Juarez, Mexico (which was the inspiration for Rodarte's Fall 2001 RTW collection). The clothing collection was well-received, but there has been an amazing amount of negative backlash toward the limited edition makeup collection.
What's the problem? Well, to keep it short -- since this has been covered by many, many people -- the makeup products have names like "Factory" and "Bordertown." Nothing particularly wrong with those words out of context, but in context, it just comes across as callous. When you pointedly name your makeup products about the climate in Juarez, it just seems that you don't particularly care about what's going on, other than it giving you inspiration to make clothes or makeup. There's nothing wrong, in my opinion, with taking inspiration for art from tragic events, but it has to be done tactfully... and MAC and Rodarte missed the mark here.
Had they said from the start they were going to donate all proceeds to some sort of efforts to protect the women of Juarez, I think this would have gone over much better. Recent developments say that they will donate a portion of the proceeds (and I did see something that said 100% but I'm not sure if that was just a rumor), so they are making amends (MAC more so than Rodarte), but this was just an unfortunate event for the image of both companies.
But don't let anyone ever tell you that your voice doesn't matter to some people, because it was the intense negative reaction that caused the two companies to a) issue apologies and b) donate money. So on that note, what do you think about this whole thing? What if the collection had been inspired by some other atrocity? Would that change your mind about the situation? Will you be buying anything from the MAC x Rodarte line?
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