Gabbana responds to Sir Elton's boycott calls

Fashion designer Stefano Gabbana has responded to calls from Sir Elton John for people to boycott the Dolce and Gabbana fashion label.

The singer criticised the designers after they called children born through IVF "synthetic" in a magazine interview.

Stefano Gabbana has since said that "it was never our intention to judge other people's choices."

"We do believe in freedom and love," he added in a statement.

Sir Elton, who has two children with his husband David Furnish, had a go at the fashion designers for rejecting same-sex families and the use of IVF fertility treatment.

On Sunday he wrote on Instagram: "How dare you refer to my beautiful children as 'synthetic'."

"And shame on you for wagging your judgemental little fingers at IVF - a miracle that has allowed legions of loving people, both straight and gay, to fulfil their dream of having children.

"Your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions.

"I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again. #BoycottDolceGabbana."

Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish

Motherhood was the theme for the Dolce & Gabbana Milan women's fashion show

Business partners Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who are both gay and were a couple for 23 years until breaking up in 2005, have rejected same-sex marriage in the past.

But in an interview with Italian magazine Panorama this weekend they went further saying they also didn't agree with the idea of gay families.

"We oppose gay adoptions," they say, "The only family is the traditional one.

"No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed."

Domenico Dolce went on to say that having children should be an "act of love".

He said: "You are born to a mother and a father - or at least that's how it should be.

"I call children of chemistry, synthetic children. Rented uterus, semen chosen from a catalogue."

Stefano Gabbana added: "The family is not a fad. In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging."

In an interview in 2006, Gabbana revealed in another Italian magazine that he had approached a woman to be the mother of his baby but said he struggled with the idea.

"I am opposed to the idea of a child growing up with two gay parents," he said.

"A child needs a mother and a father. I could not imagine my childhood without my mother. I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother."

But a fair few celebrities have backed Sir Elton's call.

Among them singer Courtney Love, who tweeted that she wanted "to burn" her D&G clothes.

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