19. An Uncomfortable Joke About a Fashion Company’s Past
English comedian Russell Brand got himself kicked out of a GQ magazine’s Men of the Year Awards shindig in 2013, when he cracked jokes about the event’s sponsor, Hugo Boss, and its Nazi ties. As Brand put it: “If anyone knows a bit about history and fashion, you know it was Hugo Boss, who made uniforms for the Nazis. …But they looked f-u-c-k-i-n-g fantastic, let’s face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality“.
Understandably, Hugo Boss’ executives were not thrilled that all they got for the £250,000 they had spent to sponsor the event was another dose of bad publicity about their company’s Nazi past. Whether Russell Brand’s humor was in good taste or bad, he was not wrong about the fashion designer’s Nazi ties. Today, Hugo Boss is a global luxury fashion brand, famous for its flashy ties and classic suits. It had about 1100 company owned stores worldwide as of 2019, and about 4 billion dollars in sales. As seen below, there is quite a bit of darkness in the company’s background.
