Marc Jacobs International President Robert Duffy Hit with Law Suit

Patrice Lataillade, who had served as the chief financial officer of Marc Jacobs' label (owned by luxury powerhouse LVMH) since 2002 was fired last year. But now, Lataillade, who is straight and married, is now suing the company saying that Robert Duffy (pictured at right with Sofia Coppola and Marc Jacobs, when he was a bit pudgier, at the 2005 Out 100 party) -- the company's president and Marc's right-hand man -- created a "hostile work environment". He claims, among other things, that Duffy required employees to look at pornographic material at the workplace and he required a store employee to perform a pole dance for him.

First of all, that sounds like a boring day at the Out offices. We get yelled at for not looking at enough porn, for God's sake. Secondly, this smells awfully suspicious seeing as he conveniently is suing after he's been fired and never made any complaints during his eight years with the company -- seems like if these offenses were so serious he should have brought them up at the time, eh? Third of all, if you follow the Marc Jacobs Twitter, you know that working for the illustrious fashion brand is probably not akin to working at Deutsche Bank -- fashion is a creatively driven field filled with eccentrics and misfits. We have a feeling that the corporate environment there is probably a bit more....unconventional....than most offices. There was once a documentary we caught on TV about Marc and him designing one of his collections and if we recall correctly, he was chain-smoking the whole time and running around with his naked fit model all over the studio. To be honest, that's just another day in the fashion industry.