I won’t tell everyone to agree with me.
This is the view I take on some of these "It could be intentional racism, or it might actually be a mistake". In this specific incident with Gucci, I personally think it was a failed attempt to continue with their tacky "Look at me!!!" style they've been promoting the past few years, but I am not completely ruling out actual racism or judging anyone that 100% thinks it's meant to offend black people
TO ME, at the very least, they should've been more responsible and aware of what could offend a large % of their clientele, and they should definitely have more diverse teams in order to make sure these things don't happen.
It's not on the same level of blackface, but I'll give an example of a promotion my company was about to run last year. Our marketing team was about to put an ad on FB which I thought was funny, but our CEO stepped in last minute and said "No, this could be interpreted as offensive from people from the South". What many of these European companies are missing is that type of voice
As a non black person, if you showed me that same Gucci sweater a decade ago, blackface would not have been the first thing that came to my mind. Even this time I only saw it because a lot of black people on NT have informed me over the years about what kind of non-obvious imagery could be offensive.
Same thing with Jynx; when I was a kid, I never once identified Jynx as a black caricature. I honestly just thought it was a weird @#$ Pokemon; we used to compare Jynx to one of my friends that started ODng her makeup and hair dye back in the day
This is why it's important to have diversity, so you can learn from your mistakes/lack of knowledge and make sure it doesn't happen again.
TO ME, I think it's ok to forgive and move on if the correct steps have been taken, but I completely understand if others don't feel the same, especially black people who routinely have to deal with this from all sorts of companies.