A Burberry shop in Shanghai Photo: VCG

It has become a business practice for overseas luxury brands to roll out special collections for important Chinese festivals, such asthe Spring Festival or Chinese Valentine's Day, and subsequently it has also become a sort of legacy for Chinese shoppers to comment and pecker at those collections. 

This time, it's Burberry's turn.

Recently, the top British fashion brand rolled out a Chinese New Year campaign to celebrate the incoming Chinese Lunar Year of the Ox. The collection features bull prints on ready-to-wear collections, handbags, shoes and other accessories such as caps and scarves. The collection photos starred Chinese supermodel Liu Wen. 

The campaign stirred up mockery and criticism on China's social media platforms, most of which described the collection's design as being weird and out of fashion. 

One netizen commented on Sina Weibo that it looks like "committing suicide" if the collections are not worn by a model. Another said that the collection could be "donated to a Chinese migrant worker", as the workers are often known to carry large, checkered bags back home during the Chinese New Year holiday, which netizens say look a bit like Burberry's design. 

Some netizens critiqued that some overseas fashion designers' understanding of Chinese culture is "superficial." 

Burberry is not the first overseas luxury brand to draw fire on China's social media platforms after launching special collections that do not fit in with Chinese people's aesthetics. Balenciaga's latest design for limited Chinese New Year souvenirs, also featuring ox patterns, was criticized by Chinese netizens as being tasteless and "simply ugly." In August, the brand's Chinese Valentine Day handbag campaign drew scorn in China, deemed as tasteless.