Why Did Amazon Put Heidi Klum In This Terrible Dress?

Despite the relentless kitsch of the Tim and Heidi dynamic, I ended up bingeing more of Amazon's Making the Cut. It is so over-the-top in its production values I kind of hate it. But it is ok background noise while spreading out all my possessions on the floor and pretending that I'm "organizing."

But then in Episode 7 Heidi walked out in THIS:

*record scratch*

Wow, um so this is a horrid cartoony version of a totem pole and blatant cultural appropriation of Northwest Coast Native style. I did some googling and found out that this dress is from a 2013 collection by (non-Native) designer Jeremy Scott for Adidas. 

Here is a photo Heidi posted on Twitter when the show was filming:

And here are some other looks from the collection: 

Yikes.

MEGA YIKES

This collection was firmly condemned by Native people when it was released. Check out this blog post here (best quote: "[Scott's] inspiration was unoriginal, and his take on Northwest Coast formline was ignorant, disrespectful and badly construed"). Tellingly, it wasn't available for purchase in the US-- so Adidas maybe sensed they had a controversy on their hands. So WHY ON EARTH would the Amazon fish this abomination out of the 2013 bin and give it this platform?? 

As I mentioned already, Making the Cut is very glossy. Amazon clearly spent massive money on it: there is a million dollar prize, high-budget fashion shows in Paris and Tokyo, and judges that you know were only lured there with a huge paycheck. There are lots of artsy, slow-motion shots with swelling music that try to make you feel like you are watching something really important and powerful. Every visual feels very manipulated and curated. So unless Heidi brought this dress in from home and said she would leave the show if she couldn't wear it (highly unlikely) this dress was intentionally picked out for her by a team of stylists and she and Tim Gunn and the rest of the production team thought it was a great choice instead of gasping in horror and being like:

Just a reminder that Eighth Generation, a Native-owned business which sells products actually designed by Native artists is awesome and is taking online orders during the pandemic (along with sourcing 10,000 N95 masks and donating them to local clinics).