QUEER EYE FOR ELTON JOHN

I’m going to march out and buy me a $500 Dolce & Gabbana handbag. Who’s with me? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Can the beautiful people be any more shallow, hypocritical, and discriminatory?

Guest Post by Brett Arends

Dolce & Gabbana goes on the offense in spat with Elton John

Italian designers square off against Tinseltown

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Elton John

There are lots of ways to try to put out a public relations fire.

You can say you were “quoted out of context,” a phrase that has become a synonym for saying “I didn’t really say what I said.”

You can go on Jimmy Kimmel and apologize, as actor Gary Oldman did after appearing to defend, or excuse, Mel Gibson’s prior anti-Semitic remarks.

You can blame it on an addiction and go into rehab, as Tiger Woods did after sleeping with so many other women that his wife — allegedly — tried to wallop him with his world-famous golf clubs.

You can go on a reality TV show to try to “humanize” your image. Think of fallen Republican Congressman Tom DeLay on “Dancing With The Stars”… in red pants, no less.

You can do public acts of charity and philanthropy to rehabilitate your reputation — like Wall Street figures Michael Milken, a convicted felon, and Stephen Schwarzman, who compared some tax proposals to “Hitler invading Poland.” Both were celebrated recently for “philanthropy” on the cover of Forbes.

Or you can just “go dark” — say nothing, do nothing in public, and wait till it all goes away. Things may go viral on Twitter really quickly, but they peter out really quickly too. Nitwitters easily forget.

All of these are legitimate spin strategies that can work in a crisis.

But Italian clothes designer Stefano Gabbana has skipped all six and gone straight to number seven: Shooting the messenger.

After singer Elton John called for a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana products over some controversial remarks, Stefano Gabbana decided the best form of defense is attack.

Elton John is “ignorant” and his remarks are “fascist,” Gabbana told Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper, this week. The singer doesn’t believe in democracy, and doesn’t respect other people’s points of view, he added.

So much for not pouring gasoline on the fire.

The backstory: Gabbana and his business partner Domenico Dolce recently gave an interview to the Italian magazine Panorama in which they criticized in vitro fertilization, calling babies so conceived “synthetic,” and also criticized gay adoption, arguing instead for the “traditional” family. (The designers happen to be gay.)

“You don’t expect industrial-strength conservative views on parenting and fertility options to emerge alongside a runway catwalk in Rome,” says Cosmo Macero, a spin doctor at O’Neill & Associates, a public relations firm, in Boston. “Clearly the pop-fashion-entertainment-culture world feels upended because such an unlikely pair are basically sounding off like they’re from the American Family Association,” he adds.

And how.

Elton John, who is gay, married, and has two children conceived by IVF, was so outraged he said he would “never” wear D&G products again, and he called on a worldwide boycott of the fashion house. Martina Navratilova, singer Ricky Martin, and Victoria Beckham all jumped on board. A Twitter campaign to boycott the products got going.

Hollywood producer Ryan Murphy called for all of Tinseltown to join it, and said he was throwing his D&G stuff in the trash. Courtney Love Cobain, not to be outdone, said she wanted to burn hers.

Gabbana admits that the furor might cause D&G some business — although the designers are now both so rich they probably don’t care that much.

But instead of apologizing or claiming the remarks were taken out of context, the pair have gone on the offensive.

Their argument: Why should everyone have to agree with Elton John on the major issues of the day?

“These attacks are fascist,” Gabbana told the newspaper. “I wasn’t expecting it from a person like Elton John whom I considered — I underline considered — intelligent. You preach understanding, you preach tolerance and then you attack? Just because someone thinks differently to you?”

“Is that supposed to be a democratic way of thinking? Enlightened? He’s ignorant, in the sense that he denies ways of seeing things that may not be his but are just as deserving of respect.”

And in a decidedly risky move, the pair sought to evoke the recent massacre at Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo, by launching a “Je Suis D&G” campaign.

Indeed, some are now calling for people to boycott Elton John instead.

Granted, they are taking on an easy target. Elton John once called Madonna a “fairground stripper,” and merrily swallowed his principles to play at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding in return for $1 million. Given his sometimes peculiar fashion sense, some might consider an Elton John boycott to add, rather than detract, from D&G’s design kudos.

Oh, and shortly after tweeting about his boycott he was photographed schlepping around Beverly Hills with a D&G bag in his hand.

Will this work? Stay tuned.