In a way, I’ve been boycotting Dolce & Gabbana my whole life. That’s to say, I’ve been boycotting that particular label, which flogs coats for upwards of £2,000, in the same way that I’ve been boycotting yachts, leopards and Fabergé eggs.
So this week’s call to arms for The Gays to boycott D&G, over Mr Dolce and Mr Gabbana’s curiously conservative stance on IVF and same-sex parents, wasn’t a big ask (for me, at least). My knowledge of high fashion extends as far as quite fancying Cara Delevingne, so I doubt I’d even know a D&G dress if it flapped me in the face with its exquisite satin hem.
But, for the likes of Elton John, who happens to have two children born via a surrogate mother and isn’t exactly un-fashiony, this boycott is something to be taken seriously. Well, depending on whether or not you believe those photos of him toting a Dolce & Gabbana bag a day after he inspired the #boycottDolceAndGabbana Twitter trend were, as his publicist has said, Photoshopped.
But back to the D&G design duo themselves. In an interview with an Italian magazine, the pair slated same-sex couples who adopt and called IVF children “synthetic”. There’s nothing quite like gay-bashing gays. Especially ones who work in an industry that’s, in spite of all other ethical foibles, pretty damn gay friendly (to men, at least).
The designers’ comments were heinous; about that I have no doubt. Like it or not, famous LGBT people have something of a duty to support their community, and backing the rights of same-sex parents is a huge part of that. And I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to jump straight on the #boycottDolceAndGabbana bandwagon. At the same time, it strikes me as odd that we look to brands for any kind of moral integrity in the first place.
Fashion designers are good at clothes. That’s their job. Making the world a better place for women and ethnic minorities? Not so much. From Tommy Hilfiger allegedly saying that he didn’t want black or Asian people to buy his clothes, to John Galliano’s infamous antisemitic rant in 2011, making a list entitled “stupid shit fashionistas have said” would be piss easy.
Let’s just step back and take a look at the fashion industry as a whole. You can barely buy a pair of knickers on the high street without being safe in the knowledge that they were toiled over by an eleven-year-old in some distant corner of the developing world. You can’t open a fashion magazine without having female models’ unattainable figures thrust down your pupils. Several labels have been accused of failing to hire models from ethnic minorities. Are we really looking to an industry that uses child labour, torments women and ignores people of colour to lead the fight for social justice?
I’m not sure what those boycotting Dolce & Gabbana aim to achieve. Sure, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana could release some utterly disingenuous press release saying that they had “over-firmly denied”, to use Grant Shapps’s peculiar phrasing, the rights of same-sex parents. And that by “We oppose gay adoptions. The only family is the traditional one”, they actually meant, “We are 100 per cent in favour of non-traditional families. Babies for everyone. Rainbows! Yay!” In which case, would it suddenly be OK to buy their clothes again? Would it not be more productive overall to use this whopper of a foot-in-mouth moment to open up a dialogue about why these guys are just a pair of thick, self-loathing dicks?
Well-off supporters of gay rights, by all means boycott Dolce & Gabbana. Just remember though that all you’re really doing is batting a fly off an industry that’s rotten to its core.
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