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The fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana has filed a lawsuit demanding more than 500 million euros in damages from two American bloggers.

These had published anti-Asian comments that had been attributed to the designer Stefano Gabbana and had led to a boycott by Asian consumers.

The lawsuit was filed in a civil court in Milan in 2019, but only became known this week when the creators of the Diet Prada blog, Tony Liu and Lindsay Schuyler, reported it on their Instagram account.

In November 2018, Dolce & Gabbana was boycotted by many consumers in Asia after outrage over videos that advertised a fashion show in Shanghai and were perceived as culturally insensitive.

In it, a Chinese woman ate Italian desserts with chopsticks.

The fashion show was eventually canceled.

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Insulting comments were also made in a non-public Instagram chat, calling China a "shitty country".

Gabbana and fellow designer Domenico Dolce initially said that Gabbana’s Instagram account had been hacked.

They later posted a video to apologize to the Chinese people.

“The social media court brought a million dollar fashion company to its knees,” WELT wrote at the time.

Compensation for necessary image campaign

"This whole trial is an attempt to silence Diet Prada and personally silence Tony and Lindsay," said Susan Scafidi, director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School, which coordinates the bloggers' defense.

Dolce & Gabbana lawyers declined to comment to the AP news agency.

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According to Scafidi, the fashion house is demanding 450 million euros, which have been spent on polishing up the brand image since 2018, 89.6 million euros for sales losses in Asia and further millions, for which it cites various reasons.

Defense lawyers for the blogger argued in the Milan court earlier this week that Italy was not the right place for the trial because the blog was being made in the US and the alleged damage occurred in Asia.