I do realise it's kind of old news by now, but I was so caught up IRL recently that I only found out about this whole ordeal a couple of weeks ago.
Having read numerous opinions on the topic, I came away with several "questions" or rather examples of perfumers or heads of fashion houses and businesses doing basically the same thing Duchaufour did and yet never getting badmouthed for that.
The first thing that pops to mind is Amouage. The state of Oman is guilty of heinous crimes against humanity. It is one of the few countries where the so called female circumcision is practiced to this day (see
wiki at your own risk)
Countless young women die every year form comlications related to this procedure, which is
not voluntary, as well as genital injury sustained due to being wed at an age of 10-12 to full grown men. This is where Amouage comes from. This is the state with which Guy Robert signed his contract for "Gold". And yet little to none is said about the moral dilemma behind wearing Amouage. I wonder why and how Oman is better, cleaner and more moral than Uzbekistan.
Want more dirty perfume? Mademoiselle Chanel was a collaborationist during WWII, an antisemite and a homophobe. Not much compared to the state of Oman, right? Let's not forget about Francois Coty then, who personally gave out Jews and families hiding them in his neighborhood to the nazi troops around the same time. Still we admire L'Origan, Chypre et al without second thought.
Back to Guli though. Duchaufour might be the mastermind behind her perfumery line, but guess who sews her dresses. Dior, D&G and Gucci are her bespoke tailors to name a few. Louis Vuitton makes her luggage. And I seriously doubt she's their only dictator-daughter moneybag.
On a more affordable scale, Nike, Adidas and Reebok make their shoes and T-shirts in Vietnamese sweatshops where the workers are basically slaves in horrid conditions with monthly wages lesser than the price of a pair of those very shoes.
I'm not saying that because others have done the same thing, Mr. D can be completely absolved of the choice he made. What I'm trying to imply is that we need to look around before rushing to judgement and picking a scapegoat.