The real world didn't need any more proof that the famous are insulated from the reality – not to mention the opinions – of those who might be interested in buying what they're selling. But designer brand Dolce & Gabbana will nonetheless become a case study to disprove Oscar Wilde's chestnut: in fashion now, there is such a thing as bad publicity. (As long as it lasts, anyway.)
A #boycottdolcegabbana campaign was started by News Italia, an LGBT-friendly site, in the wake of Stefano Gabbana's recent comments in Panorama magazine criticizing gay adoption and calling children conceived by in-vitro fertilization "synthetic."
The stance was swiftly rebuked by Sir Elton John, who has two sons born by surrogate, on his Instagram. The "traditional" family-values position tacit in Dolce & Gabbana's fall 2016 Viva la Mamma runway show (in which pregnant models walked alongside children and babies) and an ad campaign featuring Italian nonnas were both seen as sweet but gimmicky. After the interview, and its subsequent controversy, both can be read not as a pose, but an explicit expression of their ideological position.
The thing is this: Fashion can be as fickle about what's in and what's out in activism as it is about what's in style.
As far as boycotts go, #boycottdolcegabbana isn't exactly the Civil Rights movement's "Don't buy where you can't work" campaigns initiated in the northern U.S. during the Depression, or Gandhi's boycott on Lancashire cotton. It's more along the lines of One Million Moms, a conservative Christian family values group that took the opposite tack when JC Penney hired openly gay Ellen DeGeneres as spokeswoman – and when was the last time you saw that hashtag?
Basically, #boycottdolcegabbana urges consumers to refrain from buying D&G's lacy frocks and trim suits. Or, more likely, the brand's relatively more affordable, logo-laden secondary line of products, including cologne – bottles of the latter in trash bins or being poured down drains made many appearances on Instagram. (Though, notably, not one pair of the label's fur-covered headphones, which cost nearly $10,000, went up in flames). And, as the week elapsed, so did the first heated flush of outrage, much like the orange stickers about boycotting Joe Fresh over the 2013 Bangladesh factory collapse have faded and peeled off city posts.
Except there's a peculiar reputational economics to eponymous fashion labels. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have larger-than-life personalities and their clothes are somehow more of an extension of self than objects from other artistic disciplines might be. Add to that the celebrity and lifestyle mystique that fashion cultivates as part of buying into a brand.
After John Galliano's conviction for anti- Semitic hate speech in 2011, there may have been a discreet pause, but there was no noisy consumer boycott of Galliano's own brand or of the Dior collections he had overseen, in part because the brands immediately severed ties with him. Given the arguably progressive communities the Dolce & Gabbana fashion empire depends on for its success, and that the men and their social media presence are inextricably tied to their brand, D&G's remarks and subsequent Instagram pile-on may have been momentary misfires.
Fashion and entertainment figures led a different boycott only last spring (so three seasons ago), when they were denouncing a different human rights issue and boycotting The Dorchester Collection, a travel property portfolio that includes the fashion tribe's favourite haunts such as Paris's Hôtel Plaza Athénee, the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Bel-Air in Los Angeles. It's owned by an investment fund controlled by the Sultan of Brunei and the idea was to urge the Islamic sultanate to repeal Sharia Law (a penal code whereby punishment may include execution of homosexuals and adulterers by public stoning). Early on, designers Brian Atwood and Peter Som used their vast social networks to urge fans and followers to boycott the properties (François-Henri Pinault, chair of Kering, soon chimed in on behalf of the company, as did Saint Laurent and many others); the Human Rights Campaign issued an open letter and other human rights groups joined in, as did Oprah, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jay Leno and John Legend, who cancelled an appearance there in February.
During this past Oscar season, a number of parties traditionally held at the properties moved to other venues, but as the Dorchester Group's CEO Christopher Cowdray has stated, that a boycott hurts employees and by extension the local economy (certainly more than it affects the Sultan). And the nominal shift of selecting a different fancy hotel seems to have been short-lived – the style set wasn't going to forego its favourite Polo Lounge salad for long. Stylist Cameron Silver, who was among the boldface names who launched the boycott, held an event at the Hotel Bel-Air in early March. The only tangible outcome to date, in fact, is not any repeal of the draconian laws but that the company has suspended its annual Dorchester Fashion Prize, worth £25,000 (about $47,000) to a winning emerging designer.
Designer boycott hashtags are easy to type, and quick to hype, as is for most people to adhere to the "defiant" act of not staying at a luxury hotel or buying designer perfume, making both largely moot. Being fabulously principled is one thing, but being inconvenienced when one's Town Car sputters out of gas on the way to the Miu Miu show is another. What's more complicated is how the same sultanate is a gasoline monopoly – editors and stars didn't stay at the Bel-Air, but probably fuelled up at Shell at some point.
The hardship of abstaining from certain luxury fashion goods seems especially ridiculous – it is passive, discretionary politics at best – as is its opposite, buycotting, which means deliberately purchasing certain products for ethical and political reasons. Though people do that, too: it would be smart for Elton John to capitalize on this and put out a new album ASAP.
Nathalie Atkinson