Diet Prada Respond to Dolce & Gabbana Defamation Lawsuit

Popular fashion commentary blog Diet Prada have been the target of legal action from Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana, who are claiming defamation and a "smear campaign" against them.

Dolce & Gabbana have claimed “serious and repeated defamatory conduct” on Diet Prada's part after their coverage of the heavily criticised #DGLovesChina marketing campaign. The campaign drew widespread criticism at the time for its stereotyped depiction of the Asian community.

In the aftermath of the criticism, direct messages between an Instagram user and brand co-founder Stefano Gabbana emerged in which Gabbana disparages the country of China as a whole and referenced offensive and racist stereotypes regarding Chinese people. Gabbana later claimed that his Instagram account had been hacked. The brand's Shanghai show was cancelled and retailers including Secoo Holding and Yoox Net-A-Porter removed their product from their stores.

Diet Prada, co-founded by Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler, brought the case to light for the first time in a post to their Instagram today but explained that the case has been in motion since early 2019. They explained in a statement that now felt like the right time to speak about the legal struggle, referencing the soaring instances of anti-asian hate crimes that have been on the uprise across the U.S. and that "as a small company founded by a person of color (...) it feels wrong to continue to remain silent about a lawsuit that threatens our freedom of speech".

The lawsuit seeks a total of approximately $4.8 million in damages: €3 million EUR (approx. $3.6 million USD) for Dolce & Gabbana as a company and €1 million EUR ($1.2 million USD) for Stefano Gabbana individually. The case claims this is due to a loss in revenue stemming from negative coverage of the brand.

Diet Prada explain that that their defense is being jointly handled by nonprofit the Fashion Law Institute, based at Fordham Law School, in collaboration with Italian law firm AMSL Avvocati.

A GoFundMe for Diet Prada's Legal Defense Fund has been established to offset the costs of fighting their ongoing legal battle.

Donate to Diet Prada's Legal Defense Fund here