Adele responds to Notting Hill Carnival photo backlash: ‘I didn’t read the f***ing room’
Singer was accused of cultural appropriation after sharing picture showing her wearing Jamaican flag bikini and bantu knots
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Adele has admitted that she “didn’t read the f***ing room” in response to her controversial Notting Hill Carnival post.
Last summer, the “Hello” singer caused a stir online after she posted a picture to Instagram with her hair in bantu knots and wearing a Jamaican flag bikini while on holiday in the Caribbean.
The photo, which she shared to mark what would have been Notting Hill Carnival weekend in London, received backlash from critics who accused Adele of cultural appropriation.
In a new interview with British Vogue, Adele said that she “totally” understood the response to the photo.
“I could see comments being like, ‘The nerve to not take it down,’ which I totally get,” she said.
“But if I take it down, it’s me acting like it never happened. And it did. I totally get why people felt like it was appropriating.”
Explaining why she had originally wanted to wear the outfit, Adele said that she’d felt that Jamaican culture was so “entwined” with that part of London that she should “dress to celebrate the Jamaican culture” in honour of Carnival.
“I didn’t read the f***ing room,” she said, before apparently joking that she received something in the way of karma for her error.
“I was wearing a hairstyle that is actually to protect Afro hair. Ruined mine, obviously.”
Elsewhere in her Vogue interview, Adele opened up about her new music and split from ex-husband Simon Konecki.
She claimed that the media had got the timeline of her relationship with Konecki “completely wrong” and that she had actually only married him in 2018, as opposed to the widely reported 2016. They publicly divorced in 2019.
Earlier this week, Adele announced that her new single “Easy On Me” from her forthcoming fourth album would be released on 15 October.
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