MILAN (AP) – Milan-based fashion house Dolce & Gabbana has filed a defamation lawsuit in an Italian court, claiming damages of more than $ 600 million from two US fashion bloggers who reposted anti-Asian comments attributed to one among the designers that led to the boycott of Asian consumers.
The lawsuit was filed in a civil court in Milan in 2019, but only became public this week, when bloggers posted about it on their Instagram account, Diet Prada. Their feed is widely followed in the fashion world for its reduced comments on originality in designs and social issues.
“The whole case is a way to try to silence the Prada Diet and personally silence Tony (Liu) and Lindsay (Schuyler) personally,” said Susan Scafidi, director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School, which coordinates bloggers. defense.
Lawyers for Dolce & Gabbana contacted by the AP declined to comment on the case.
The case dates from November 2018, when Dolce and Gabbana faced a boycott in Asia after getting upset over what they saw as culturally insensitive videos promoting a major show on the Shanghai track and subsequent insulting commentary posts in a private Instagram chat.
The show was canceled in the backlash, which included retailers pulling Dolce & Gabbana products and Asian VIPs rejecting the brand.
Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana initially said Gabbana’s account had been hacked. The two later appeared in a video apologizing to the Chinese people.
“A public apology and a quiet trial even cancel each other out in my mind,” Safidi told the Associated Press on Saturday.
Italian lawyers filed a lawsuit this week in Milan’s civil court, claiming that Italy is not the right place for the case, given that the blog is produced in the United States and the alleged damage took place in Asia.
The fashion house is seeking damages totaling more than half a billion euros, Scafidi said.
She said that the fashion house is looking for 450 million euros spent to restore the brand image in 2018 and damages of 3 million euros for the company and 1 million for Gabbana, to whom the remarks were attributed. The lawsuit is also seeking more than 8.6 million euros for the cancellation of the show in Shanghai, another 8.6 million euros for staff costs and 89.6 million euros for lost Asian sales from November 2018 to March 2019.
Since becoming public, Diet Prada, which has over 2.5 million followers on Instagram, has raised over $ 38,000 for its defense.
In a statement, Liu and Schuyler said they would not allow their platform, which was also vocal about the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and recent attacks on Asians in the United States, to be silenced by lawsuits. .
“The Prada Diet will continue to be a platform to raise these crucial issues,” Liu said.
Schuyler called on “personalities and public brands to respond to criticism of public opinion and the media with progressive actions, not lawsuits.”