Dior named in legal suit for mislabelling of packaging for SPF product

Luxury fashion house, Christian Dior, part of the LVMH portfolio is facing a class action lawsuit for falsely labelling and marketing its cosmetic products and stating that it offers a 24-hour SPF protection. The lawsuit, seen by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, claims that the company is intending to profit from consumers’ desire to protect their skin from the sun’s harmful rays by being unlawful, false, misleading and deceptive to consumers. These products include the Dior Forever Foundation and the Dior Forever Skin Glow Foundation.

According to the filing, consumers lack the meaningful ability to test or independently ascertain the truthfulness of the claims, especially at the point of sale as it requires investigation well beyond the drug store aisle and knowledge of regulations and chemistry beyond that of the average consumer. "Therefore, consumers had no reason to investigate whether the products actually provide more than 2 hours of SPF protection as the labels claim," said the lawsuit. It added on that reasonable consumers do not expect that the fine print on back label would contradict the front label SPF representations. 

“The products deceive consumers by advertising that the products will provide SPF protection for longer than two hours. These claims are false. The products do not and cannot provide more than two hours of SPF protection. For the same reason, the claims are misleading to consumers who rely on the claims and use the products, believing they will provide 24 hour protection from the sun," it said.

The lawsuit also claimed that in 2021, the sun protection products market had an overall valuation of US$15.3 billion dollars, and the market for SPF-containing cosmetics is continuing to grow and expand.

"Because [Dior] knows consumers rely on representations regarding the number of hours the products will last, [Dior] has an incentive to continue to make such false and misleading representations," the lawsuit said. 

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The lawsuit alleged that other trends suggest that Dior has no incentive to change its labeling practices. For example, one market analysis revealed that the market for sun protection products expected to grow at a 6.6% compound annual growth rate through 2031. In the next ten years, the consumption of sun protection products for skin is expected to witness 1.8 times growth.

“Defendant continues to launch new SPF-containing cosmetic lines to diversify its portfolio to maintain its competitive edge, making it likely that defendant will continue to unlawfully and misleadingly advertise the Products to perpetuate the misrepresentations regarding how long the SPF sun protection lasts,” it added.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Dior for an official statement. 

On a similar note, Dior filed a lawsuit against adult film actress Gigi Dior, according to Page Six in November last year. In 2021, the adult entertainment actress trademarked her stage name, and in September, it was approved.

Now the luxury fashion house is requesting to overturn the approved trademark. The brand said that the adult film actress is damaging the company’s brand.  Dior’s lawsuit said there is a “likelihood of confusion, dilution by blurring and dilution by tarnishment”. 

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