Woops - what in the world was going on in the designer's head when he/she decided to place a swastika amongst the loud embroidery on this Zara bag? Well, I'm not the only head spinning over the question; WWD reports that Zara "was forced to pull the bag from its shelves" after receiving complaints about the design. Bag Snob says "even more shocking is that it made its way to the 1,026 stores in 68 countries across the world!" However, it is unclear how many bags actually made it to the stores and how many stores carried the item. Zara release a statement, "Of course we apologise to anyone who was offended by the bag, and we will be withdrawing it from all our stores." Utter craziness.
Edit: Yes, surely the designer meant to reflect on the symbol as it is widely-used in Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc) but the wider understanding of a swastika is as used by the Nazi regime. I'm quite impressed with ya'lls far-reaching cultural knowledge!
It's a bit of a shame really, the rest of the bag was pretty cute...
Too bad - the rest of the bag was adorable!
I agree with Miff, I'm sure it was meant to be used in that other way.
Miff, I was just about to post the same thing.
The swastika really was misappropriated by the Nazis and actually has much older Vedic roots. Hitler pretty much took it and gave it new meaning for his own purposes. It's really too bad as the older meaning of the symbol is one of well-being and could really be considered as a beautiful part of the design.
In the Royal Ontario Museum, there is a large Buddha statue (at least, I think it's a Buddha--it's in the Chinese wing of the museum) with a swastika on it.
I think it's ridiculous that just because ONE culture misused it, it's become taboo, considering its very different meanings for other cultures.