Urban Outfitters is known for stirring up controversy when it comes to the products they choose to sell. Their most recent clothing scandal has offended the Kent State community, a university in Ohio, as well as those around the country familiar with the tragedy. In my eyes, the sweatshirt horrifically glorifies the 1970 massacre that left four students dead at Kent State after the National Guard opened fire during a peaceful protest.
This inexcusable Kent State “vintage” sweatshirt—as Urban Outfitters is choosing to describe it—appears to be blood-stained. This $129 sweatshirt was the only one of its kind to be produced and sold on the company’s Urban Renewal site–an online flea market where designers take dated products and utilize dye techniques to reinvent the clothing, as reported by LA Times. Though Urban Outfitters has apologized for the sweatshirt, the designers claim that the stains were already there when it was purchased at a flea market prior to its renewal, as reported by USA Today.
The university issued a statement describing their horror with the design, and rightfully so. It read:
“May 4, 1970, was a watershed moment for the country and especially the Kent State family. We lost four students that day while nine others were wounded and countless others were changed forever. We take great offense to a company using our pain for their publicity and profit. This item is beyond poor taste and trivializes a loss of life that still hurts the Kent State community today.”
Another massacre that Urban Outfitters has glorified is none other than the Holocaust. In 2012 a t-shirt design shocked people, especially the Jewish community, when the shirt depicted a star that seemingly resembled the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Europe and death camps, reported The Huffington Post. It is outrageous that Urban Outfitters continues to develop products that mimic ethnic cleansing genocide relics, among various other serious political, emotional, and cultural matters.
Urban Outfitters has also shocked people by encouraging girls to strive for a thin figure. In 2010 the company designed a gray v-neck t-shirt that read “eat less” in white cursive letters, as reported by Forbes. Exalting eating disorders for publicity and profit is shameless and disturbing. The company’s target audience consists of males and females aged 18-30, as stated on their company profile at URBN.net. Young adults are heavily influenced by the media and especially fashion. If companies are not already condoning eating disorders enough by featuring stick thin models sporting their latest designs, I suppose spelling it out for them on a t-shirt will do the trick.
Cassandra Luddy is a UT graduate with a B.S. in Criminology who feels strongly about the distasteful designs and products that Urban Outfitters continuously sells. “I think that they utilize really low tactics to receive media attention,” Luddy said, “These tactics they’re using make me not want to shop there in general. I wasn’t a huge Urban Outfitters shopper to begin with, but I can go to ten other stores and get similar products that aren’t offensive to friends that I have and their cultures. As a girl, weight is always a problem, I don’t need to go into a store and see a shirt that says ‘eat less.’ And whether or not the Kent State shirt was an accident or discolored or whatever they’re saying it is, it’s offensive. Murder is not a joke.”
As far as the Kent State issue goes, Luddy doesn’t understand how a design like this could have been put on the market in the first place. “Somebody has to look at it before it goes on the shelf,” Luddy said, “it had to pass someone. And that person either didn’t have enough background on its history, or was just completely insensitive, but either way it had to go through someone before it went on the website. Someone should have caught that or minimally cared about that.” Obviously the designers at Urban Outfitters are extremely lenient about the products being put on the shelves. It’s almost as if they sit down and say to themselves. “Who can we offend today?
Luddy felt as though Urban Outfitters has nothing to lose with the products they sell, because bad publicity is still publicity nonetheless. “There are people out there who are going to think that offending everybody else is the coolest thing they’ve ever seen,” Luddy said, who also suggested that although they may lose some customers, there are always customers to gain.
Urban Outfitters doesn’t seem to have any respect for a plethora of groups as they continue to market controversial and downright offensive products. Freedom of expression and profit from increased publicity are the only things on this company’s mind, but I can guarantee I will not be funding their mission to make a mockery out of serious issues.
Elizabeth Rockett can be reached at elizabeth.rockett@spartans.ut.edu