Italian luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabbana is seeking compensation of more than $600 million from two fashion bloggers in the U.S., which they accused of helping spread anti-Asian comments attributed one of the company's designers.
The lawsuit alleges that the actions of the bloggers had led to a boycott by Asian consumers and millions of dollars in losses for the company. The lawsuit was reportedly filed in a Milan civil court in 2019 but was only made public this week.
One of the bloggers made the suit public in a post on his Instagram account called Diet Prada. The account is followed by millions of people and is well-known for its critical commentary, including criticism of unoriginal designs and social issues.
"This whole case is a way of trying to silence Diet Prada, and to silence Tony (Liu) and Lindsay (Schuyler) personally," the director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School, Susan Scafidi, said in a statement.
The issue dates back to 2018 when Dolce & Gabbana was set to participate in a major runway show in Shanghai. An Instagram chat that included insulting comments from one of the company's designers and culturally insensitive videos published to promote the brand resulted in a nationwide backlash.
Asian fashion influencers vowed to boycott the brand. Several retailers also joined the boycott, pulling the company's merchandise from their shelves following the scandal. Dolce & Gabbana's show in the country was eventually canceled.
Both Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana initially reasoned that their accounts were hacked and they denied ever making the posts and comments. The two eventually published a video to apologize to the Chinese people.
Scafidi said that the designers' previous public apology was negated by the fact that they had filed a silent lawsuit against the bloggers. Italian legal experts said that Milan is the wrong venue for the case given that the blogs are based in the U.S. and the alleged issue happened in Asia.
The suit is seeking damages of up to 450 million euros ($536 million) for the harm done to its brand since 2018, 1 million euros for Gabbana, whose alleged remarks were in the chat, and 3 million euros for the company. The suit is also seeking damaged of up to 8.6 million euros due to the cancelation of its show in Shanghai. It also wants the bloggers to pay 8.6 million euros for staff costs and 89.6 million euros for lost sales.
