Activist duo The Yes Men have announced on behalf of adidas a fake clothing collection inspired by workers in the German company’s Southeast Asian factories.
adidas has been seen in the last few hours in the hurricane game as a result of a striking action taken at Berlin Fashion Week by a duo of activists that stunned those gathered there (but still managed to give them a pig in a poke).
The German manufacturer of sporting goods has had to come to the fore to deny that has appointed a Cambodian trade union leader as its new Co-CEO and that it has also launched a collection of garments previously worn by workers in its factories in Southeast Asia. Everything was the product of a “trolling” of colossal dimensions.
The Activist Duo The Yes Men In the last few hours, he sent several fashion bloggers from a “fake” adidas email address a false press release from the Teutonic brand that gave an account of the company’s “revolutionary plan”. The objective of that plan was supposedly to “appropriate the reality” of the working conditions in the factories of Southeast Asia where a large part of the adidas garments are made.
The Yes Men presented the “Realitywear” collection on behalf of adidas
In the same press release, adidas announced the appointment of Vay Ya Nak Phoan, a former textile factory employee and Cambodian union leader, as the new co-CEO of the German multinational. alongside Bjørn Gulden, the former Puma executive who took the helm of the sporting goods maker earlier this year.
Beyond this appointment, adidas reported in the “fake” press release the launch of the new clothing line “Realitywear” in whose creation rapper Pharrell Williams had allegedly been involved. That clothing line was made up of garments made from “upcycling” clothes worn uninterruptedly for six months by Cambodian workers who were deprived of their wages during the pandemic.
After the release of the press release, a parody event took place in Berlin where bruised and bloody models walked down the catwalk dressed in garments from the “Realitywear” collection that the audience accepted as genuine (and as really part of an adidas collection), as stated Guardian.
Also, a couple of spiked sole flip flops it was presented to those gathered there in a glass box in order to highlight the alleged new ethics of the company.
Subsequently, adidas hastened to deny that it was behind such a striking launch.. However, when the denial from adidas arrived, several fashion websites and blogs had already made themselves aware of the press release issued by The Yes Men. “adidas seems to have learned from past mistakes and the company seems genuinely interested in correcting its course of action to date,” he wrote, for example, FashionUnited in an article that would later be withdrawn from circulation on the network of networks.
Another article, initialed this time by the MSN news aggregator, referred to the new adidas collection as an attempt by the company to “correct its mistakes” after being forced to cancel its collaboration with Kanye West as a consequence of the rapper’s anti-Semitic comments.
“adidas is a company that I hold very close to my heart”, emphasizes, for his part, Igor Vamos, co-founder of The Yes Men (and known by the nickname of Mike Bananno). “He has a long history of incredible scandals that he invariably manages to get around. It is a master company in the art of ‘greenwashing’«he emphasizes.
«Bjørn Gulden has talked a lot about doing things right. And perhaps today’s action will really move him to put his words into practice », he adds.
Igor Vamos and Jacques Servin, his particular “buddy” at the head of The Yes Menhave posed in the past as spokespersons for organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), McDonald’s or Dow Chemical.
