Paul Frank Celebrated Fashion Week With a Racist, Native American-Themed Dream Catchin' Extravaganza
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Get ready to cringe: Paul Frank hosted a Native American culture-themed “Dream Catchin” party for last week’s Fashion’s Night Out that makes Urban Outfitters’ Navajo Hipster panty fiasco look like a United Nations peace treaty.
The designer’s party planners most likely intended to celebrate native culture by dressing Frank’s famous monkey mascot in a feather headdress and offering specialty cocktails with names like “Rain Dance Refresher,” “Dream Catcher,” and “Neon Teepee” to guests like Christina Milian, who posed in “war paint” with tomahawks and bows and arrows throughout the night. But, as the tipster who notified us of the event pointed out, that’s “very much like celebrating African-American culture with a blackface party.”
Here’s how the Hollywood Reporter described the event: “Paul Frank celebrated Fashion’s Night Out with a neon-Native American powwow theme. Glow-in-the-dark war-painted employees in feather headbands and bow and arrows invited guests to be photographed on a mini-runway holding prop tomahawks.”
Cute!
According to Indian Country Today, blogger Jessica Metcalfe helped convince Paul Frank to take over 1,000 party photos off Facebook after posting about the event on Beyond Buckskin and encouraging readers to mobilize. Metcalfe took particular offense to the fact that there were loads of young kids there who were encouraged to dress up and “play Indian.”