Ever regretted something you said the moment the words left your mouth? That seems to be the case for French luxury designer Thierry Gillier, who made news when WWD published a recent controversial statement he made in an interview with the magazine.


The article, which outlined details of the new luxury hotel that Gillier plans to open in Paris, quoted the designers as saying, “It will be a slightly private hotel, not open to everybody, with 40 rooms. We are going to select guests. It won’t be open to Chinese tourists, for example. There is a lot of demand in Paris— many people are looking for quiet with a certain privacy.”


A mass of outraged messages on websites in China forced the founder of label Zadig & Voltaire to apologize in a statement where he acknowledged his “doubtless” and “clumsy” remarks— and upon the designer’s request, WWD has replaced “Chinese tourists” with “busloads of tourists” in the article.