In 2018, the Milan fashion house Dolce & Gabbana, released promotional videos that were part of the #DGLovesChina campaign to try to gain a foothold in the Asian market, which would conclude with a fashion show in Shanghai. One of these videos consisted of an Asian model trying to eat a pizza with chopsticks, images that ridiculed Asian culture, despite the fact that the campaign was launched to the contrary purpose.
This generated an endless stream of negative comments on social media against Dolce & Gabbana, which got worse when Diet Prada, two US fashion bloggers, posted on their Instagram account a series of private messages sent from the account of one of the designers, Stefano Gabbana, all of them of a racist nature towards the Asian community, causing the immediate cancellation of the
fashion show that the Italian firm had planned to hold in China.
As a consequence, the founders of Diet Prada have been secretly battling a lawsuit filed by the designers of Dolce & Gabbana holding them responsible for all the losses the brand itself has incurred since then.
The initial claim was for 3 million euros for Dolce & Gabbana itself in damages as a result of the controversy. An amount that has since been increased to 450 million euros. More than 8.6 million euros for the cancellation of the Shanghai show, another 8.6 million euros for staff expenditures and 89.6 million euros for lost Asian sales from November 2018-March 2019.
Diet Prada, who is being represented by the non-profit organization Fashion Law Institute of the Fordham School of Law through a pro bono clinical program, filed a response to the lawsuit. In fact, the institute’s mission is to help those working to hold the fashion industry to high ethical standards, to defend the right to freedom of expression, and to promote diversity, equity and inclusion”.
