I think this sounds somewhat plausible.
I do wonder where and when the shirt was actually made. But mostly I’d like to know why it was made in the first.
Because there have always been assholes.
If you didn’t know anything about the Kent State shootings, a bloody Kent State sweatshirt would have no interest at all. It would just be an old stained sweatshirt.
You mean CSI: NY, right?
The sweatshirt isn’t any more offensive than the new Ohio license plate slogan that replaces “Birthplace of Aviation”:
“Four Dead In Ohio”.
Both past precedent and Occam’s razor suggest that the “they did it for publicity” explanation is correct. They’ve done this over and over and over.
If they were genuinely sorry about their past transgressions, they would vet the items they sell more carefully. The “single employee” theory doesn’t fly.
Agreed, and that’s exactly the sort of things they put under Vintage Finds.
Yeah, it looks like the kind of shirt that someone was wearing back in say, 1970?
That article is hilarious as balls though.
While I originally had some doubts as to their innocence, I’m now fairly convinced this is not some attention grab. They buy this stuff at yard sales and flea markets and their buyer is a 30-something (far right) UK female named Sarah Kearney, not someone likely to be intimately familiar with the Kent State shootings.
I’m also leaning towards it being unintentional. People are too quick to attribute this stuff to maliciousness when simple ignorance is more likely.
Sure, if it happened once. When a company establishes a pattern of this, like UO has, it’s tougher to swallow.
You’d think though that at least ONE freaking person in the company would’ve said, “uh, that’s probably a really, REALLY bad idea?”
Yep. They’ve done it too often to believe it’s a mistake. And like I said, if they were genuinely repentant about what they’ve been doing, they’d vet the items before putting them up for sale.
For what it’s worth, I will not shop at Urban Outfitters because of their practices in this area. There’s one 2 blocks from my house so I’ve been known to browse around, but I won’t spend money there. Stuff’s overpriced anyway.
Except that I doubt that they bring the board of directors together to go over every single one of a kind item that they find at a yard sale. While $100+ might be expensive for a single, used sweatshirt, it certainly doesn’t warrant a highly staffed vetting committee to go over every such purchase.
Look, I acknowledge that they understand they are pushing the envelope when they sell alcohol related items to 18 year old kids in large quantities, but I really don’t see the CEO creasing his eyebrows and rubbing his hands together searching far and wide for a single item that might offend someone.
Urban Outfitters scores another PR coup by selling a tapestry that’s gray and white striped and emblazoned with a pink triangle. It looks a bit… well, you take a look. It’s available in stores but not the website, so depending on where you live, you might be out of luck.
And, really, people buy tapestries? I don’t think I’ve ever been in someone’s house where there was a tapestry on the wall.
There’s another thread somewhere recently that they got slammed for selling clothing that looked like Holocaust clothing. Maybe they’re just disposing of the raw fabric so people can make their own Holocaust clothing.