Billionaire U.S. media mogul Oprah Winfrey says she was the victim of racism on a recent trip to Switzerland when a shop assistant refused to show her a handbag because it was "too expensive."
Winfrey was in Zurich for
Tina Turner's wedding in late July when she left her hotel alone and
popped into an upscale handbag shop.
She told Entertainment Tonight:
"I was in Zurich the other day at a store whose name I will not
mention. I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey
gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and sandals, but obviously The
Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich."
"I go into a store and
say to the woman, 'Excuse me, may I see that bag over your head?' and
she says to me 'No, it's too expensive.'"
Winfrey says she asked again to see the bag -- a $38,000 crocodile skin number by Tom Ford -- and the woman again refused, saying, "No no no, you don't want to see that one, you want to see this one, because that one will cost too much and you will not be able to afford that."
Winfrey says she asked a
final time to see the bag: "One more time I tried -- I said, 'But I
really do just want to see that one,' and she said, 'I don't want to to
hurt your feelings,' and I said, 'Ok thank you so much, you're probably
right, I can't afford it and walked out of the store. Now why did she do
that?"
While Winfrey did not
specifically identify the shopping trip as a racist experience she told
the story during a larger interview on racism and how racism she has
suffered..
The talk show host is the
first and only female African-American billionaire, with an estimated
net worth of $2.8 billion. She said: "I could've had the big blow up
thing and thrown down the black card and all that, but why do that?"
Winfrey chose not to
identify the shop, but the name of the high-end boutique -- Trois Pomme
-- was soon revealed. The shop's manager told CNN the entire incident
was a "200 percent misunderstanding" and had nothing to do with racism.
"Mrs. Oprah said she
just wanted to look at the bag, she didn't want it taken down, and
because my sales assistant felt a little embarrassed about the price,
she quickly said that she also had the model in other materials such as
ostrich and suede, which weren't so expensive," explained Trudie Goetz,
the manager of Trois Pommes.
Calling it a "normal
selling discussion," Goetz said: "Mrs. Oprah got the impression she
didn't want to sell the bag to her because she wanted to show her other
bags. This had nothing whatsoever to do with racism."
"Who wouldn't want to
sell a bag like that? Everyone would. My saleswoman just wanted to do
her best. She feels very bad because she feels the way it's being
represented is very unfair."
Goetz added that Tina Turner was her "best friend" and that she, like Oprah, attended the singer's wedding.
CNN
No comments:
Post a Comment