Prabal Gurung, Jason Wu, Ji Oh, Phillip Lim and more industry leaders are calling on their peers to raise awareness of the increased amount of attacks against Asians and Asian Americans.
On March 16, shootings at three spas in the Atlanta, Ga. area left eight people — six of whom were of Asian descent and seven of whom were women — dead. The gunman, Robert Aaron Long, who is white, was captured on March 17.
Long told police he had previously frequented massage parlors and that he performed the shootings to eliminate his “temptation” due to a “sexual addiction,” according to The New York Times.
The hate crime comes just days after Stop AAPI Hate reported that it had been notified of 3,795 hate incidents from its inception to Feb. 28 this year. Verbal harassment and shunning account for the majority of reported incidents, followed by physical assault. Women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men, according to the report.