The owners of fashion watchdog group Diet Prada have claimed they’re being sued by Dolce & Gabbana for criticising their 2018 Chinese advertising campaign.

In late 2018, the Italian fashion house came under fire for creating a culturally insensitive campaign, which depicted a Chinese model eating Italian foods like pizza and pasta with chopsticks, while anti-Asian remarks were posted on co-founder Stefano Gabbana’s Instagram account, which he later claimed was hacked.

As a result of the backlash surrounding the campaign, many models drop out of their planned runway show in Shanghai and it was subsequently cancelled, while Dolce & Gabbana issued a public apology for the campaign.

Diet Prada, an Instagram account run by Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler, led the charge in criticising the brand, and on Thursday, they told their followers Dolce & Gabbana, the company, and Gabbana, the person, filed a defamation lawsuit against them in early 2019.

“With so much anti-Asian hate spreading in the U.S., it feels wrong to continue to remain silent about a lawsuit that threatens our freedom of speech. We are a small company co-founded by a person of color, trying to speak out against racism in our own community,” they wrote in the lengthy statement. “The lawsuit argues that we should be held responsible for lost revenue and other harm to Dolce & Gabbana and its co-founder Stefano Gabbana after we criticized their 2018 advertising campaign…

“Shortly thereafter, in early 2019, the brand filed an action for defamation demanding that we pay damages in the amount of €3 million for Dolce & Gabbana and €1 million for Stefano Gabbana.”

Besides the caption, they shared heavily redacted copies of the legal action and revealed that they submitted their defence on Monday. They have also set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for their legal defence.

– Cover Media