“Slave” jewellery causes outrage in France

The Spanish fashion chain Mango has been forced to apologise after describing one of its bracelets as “slave style” on its French website.

Screen capture/Mango website

Shoppers on the website were shocked when they saw bracelets and necklaces described as “style esclave” on sale for around 25 to 30 euros.

In Spanish, the term “esclava” can be translated as “female slave” or to describe a metal chain.

Mango apologised on its twitter page, blaming a “translation error”.

“We regret the translation error. The relevant services have been notified and will issue a correction immediately,” the brand said this morning.

RFI could still search for the offending items on the French site using the term “esclave” until the descriptions were removed around 2:30pm.

Almost 3,000 people had signed an online petition called “slavery is not fashion” before the descriptions were removed.

Two French anti-racism organisations, SOS Racisme and Le Cran, have also denounced the use of the term.

Le Cran said in a statement that it “can only express its condemnation of this jewellery line, which portrays an elegant and colonialist view of a phenomenon that has caused grief to tens of millions of human beings for almost four centuries.”