Elite fashion house Versace may be headed to court amid racial discrimination.
A former Versace employee is suing the company for unfair business practices and one of the allegations in his lawsuit is that the luxury fashion label uses a secret “code” to alert the employees when a black customer enters the store.
Christopher Sampiro, 23, says he was fired for being of mixed race, after working two weeks at the Versace outlet store in Pleasanton, California.
Sampiro alleges that during the new-employee training, a manager asked him if he knew about the “D410 Code” – the same code used for black clothing.
The manager instructed Sampiro “to say ‘D410’ in a casual manner when a black person entered the store,” according to the lawsuit. The manager explained the “code is used to alert co-workers that ‘a black person is in the store,” the lawsuit said.
