The scale of the scandal was noteworthy. Some observers – most of whom have asked to remain anonymous – have compared it to the uproar caused by John Galliano's dismissal by Dior in 2011, after a video in which the designer was heard uttering anti-Semitic insults in a Paris bar circulated. In short, "an incident that set the precedent" of pitting two opposites against each other.
On one side, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. In 1985, the two designers combined their names to found a brand (which today exceeds €1 billion in annual sales) inspired by sexy, iconic Italian imagery: Sicilian widows, Venus-like beauties, tanned footballers and macho men with slicked-back hair. The other camp was American duo Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler. After meeting in a millinery shop in New York, these two fashion-loving friends launched the Instagram account Diet Prada in December 2014, which currently has 3.4 million followers.
Tensions between the two parties ran so high that, in 2019, the designers summoned the bloggers (whose business was condemning plagiarism and cultural appropriation in the fashion industry) to appear in a Milan courtroom. Dolce & Gabbana's complaint for "serious and repeated defamatory behavior" ran to 47 pages and claimed over $665 million (nearly €591 million) in damages. The designers have only mentioned their adversaries once in the press, in 2021 in the Financial Times: "[Are they] the Buddha? Jesus? No one has the right to judge another person without taking care of the consequences of what they are doing."
To understand this battle, let's go back to November 19, 2018. That day, Dolce & Gabbana published videos (#dgloveschina) as a teaser of sorts before their fashion show scheduled to take place in Shanghai two days later. The event, with 300 models and 1,500 guests, was intended to propel the Italian label into the lucrative Chinese market. As soon as they were published, however, the videos provoked outrage. They featured Chinese model Zuo Ye, seen cutting and eating pizza, spaghetti and cannoli with difficulty, using a pair of chopsticks. In the background, a lewd-sounding male voice-over can be heard saying: "Is it too big for you?".
Online, users left a deluge of comments saying that the ads were crude, even racist. "Dolce & Gabbana have built up a fantasy based on a cartoonish depiction of Italy as alluring, ironic and idealized, as if taken from a Bertolucci film," said semiotics specialist and consultant Luca Marchetti. "But when we enter into intercultural dialogue, this same stereotypical approach becomes dangerous."
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