For the second week in a row, Marc Jacobs President Robert Duffy is in the crosshairs of former Marc Jacobs International employees.
Last weekend Duffy was called a “tyrant” on Twitter by an angry intern. This week, Duffy is being sued by former chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Marc Jacobs International, Patrice Lataillade, Women’s Wear Daily reports.
PHOTOS: Marc Jacobs Intern’s Twitter Rampage
Lataillade claims he was “subjected to a discriminatory environment offensive to him,” and was “fired in retaliation for objecting to that environment.”
According to the lawsuit, examples of the hostile work environment included Duffy’s “production and dissemination of a book that included photos of MJI staff in sexual positions or nude” and “Duffy’s use of a nude photograph for a billboard advertisement,” among other charges.
The suit also alleges that Duffy “uses company funds for personal expenses and does not censor what he does or says.”
Digging further, The New York Post writes that Duffy once forced a Marc Jacobs store employee to “perform a pole dance for him,” according to the complaint. From the time Lataillade started working at Marc Jacobs in 2002, there were several sexual harassment cases brought or floated against Duffy.
Read more on the next page.
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Continued the New York Post:
His conduct was so well-known, the filing says, that when the company’s human resources department drew up a sexual harassment policy last year, they didn’t actually disseminate it “because of a concern that it would anger Duffy,” who co-founded the company with Jacobs.
Lataillade said he “complained about Duffy’s behavior and requested, on numerous occasions, that Duffy’s creation of a sexually charged workplace be stopped,” but “nothing was done,” the suit says.
Duffy’s alleged victims also didn’t have much success with their complaints, with the company lawyer telling a young female employee she needed a “thicker skin” and a male employee to “go home early and have a drink,” the suit says.
LVMH, Jacobs parent company also named in the suit, denied all allegations to WWD.
Above: Marc Jacobs and Robert Duffy in happier times.
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Robert Duffy and Marc Jacobs.
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Robert Duffy and 50 Cent.
