Courtesy of Audrey Liu Dvorsky
- A Chinese woman said a fashion brand used a racial slur instead of her name to ship her a package.
- Audrey Liu Dvorsky said her Theory package was incorrectly addressed to "Ching Liu."
- Liu Dvorsky told Insider she was "frustrated" to see the slur in place of her name.
Theory has apologized after a Chinese customer said the fashion brand shipped an order to her home using a racial slur instead of her name.
Audrey Liu Dvorsky, 31, of Philadelphia first told the Instagram account Diet Prada – which seeks to expose wrongdoings in the fashion world to its over 2.9 million followers – that her Theory package arrived addressed to "Ching Liu."
On Tuesday, Diet Prada shared a photo that purportedly showed the package with the slur on the address label. The post has over 70,000 likes at the time of writing.
Liu Dvorsky told Insider that she was shopping at Theory in Philadelphia Premium Outlets on October 19 when a store assistant offered to ship an out-of-stock pair of leggings to her home address. Liu Dvorsky said that when the package arrived on Sunday she was "frustrated" to see the slur in place of her name, and saw that her other details were correct so it was unlikely to be the wrong delivery.
She added that she had been shopping at Theory for eight of the 10 years she has been living in the US since emigrating from China, and is now boycotting the brand.
Liu Dvorsky said she made a number of attempts to contact the brand through social media, called the store she ordered from, as well as the headquarters, and was eventually offered a refund that she said she did not want.
She said that Theory's customer services called her and claimed that the name had been entered in "error" in 2017 during a trip to Woodbury Common Premium Outlets near New York City, but it had remained unnoticed because she always made in-store purchases.
"Even back then I didn't put my name as 'Ching' when I registered," she told Insider, adding that after their call she realized they had put Liu, her maiden name, on the recent package as she was single at the time she signed up. She also said that she had filled out a new delivery form at the Philadelphia location and that her name was not used as she had entered it.
A representative for Theory told Insider that it has "no tolerance for any kind of racism or discrimination."
"We recently learned of an incident where a customer received a shipment with an incorrect delivery name and are actively investigating the cause and circumstances surrounding this error," they continued. "We sincerely apologize for this error and any distress it has caused in our community."
NPR reported in 2014 that the racial slur directed at the Asian community is rooted in "playground taunts" that originated in the 19th century.
The publication added that the use of the slur correlated with growing anti-Asian sentiments in 1800s America. The gold rush and the railroad industry beckoned more Chinese immigrants, resulting in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which halted such migration.
Liu Dvorsky told Insider that becoming a mother encouraged her to be more vocal about anti-Asian sentiments to educate others, saying she didn't want her child to "come home from school one day crying" because of a similar incident.