Pacific Brands has pulled out from its two underwear events at the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival, possibly fearing more protests involving semi-naked firemen. The company will continue its financial sponsorship of the festival, which runs from March 15 to 22.
The company had planned to present a Monday morning Bonds pop-up event and the Unzipped collection underwear show scheduled for Wednesday lunchtime in Federation Square.
Festival Director Karen Webster said "The Festival will now use this opportunity to promote local and independent designer brands in the scheduled time slots as part of the ongoing commitment to support the next generation of the fashion industry.”
The company would not comment on its reasons behind the pull-out. That leaves us to speculate that models feared for their safety following recent protests and that it would be unseemly to celebrate the brand when it has put Aussies out of jobs. Either way, the withdrawal is a sign of an embattled company losing a PR battle with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear union.
Pacific Brands recently sacked 1850 workers despite receiving $14.7million in government handouts over the past two years, a combination of events described by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as "beyond the pale". He made the comment during a regular interview on the Fairfax Media radio network when speaking to a former employee of Holeproof. "Well, I think what Pacific Brands
has done is, frankly, you know, in so many respects, beyond the pale,"
Mr Rudd said. "In terms of the monies that they've got from the
Government, we'll go through all of that in terms of what can be
extracted back from them."