Fashion brand Loewe pulls controversial outfit after outrage that it resembled Nazi concentration camp uniforms
Spanish fashion brand Loewe faced a major backlash after one outfit from a recent capsule collection was found to bear a striking resemblance to a concentration camp uniform.
The Madrid-based fashion house was called out on Instagram by industry watchdog Diet Prada, which noted how a striped shirts and pants combo in Loewe's William De Morgan capsule collection was similar to the outfits millions of persecuted Jews had to wear in Nazi death camps during World War II.
The company removed the controversial product from its website following outrage and put out a statement on Instagram, the New York Post reports.
“It was brought to our attention that one of our looks featured in a magazine and part of our Arts and Crafts ceramicist William De Morgan could be misconstrued as referring to one of the most odious moments in the history of mankind,” the statement read.
“It was absolutely never our intention, and we apologize to anyone who might feel we were insensitive to sacred memories. The products featured have been removed from our commercial offering.”
Loewe, before pulling the items from their online store, had described the “Stripe Workwear Jacket White/Black” as a “boxy workwear-inspired jacket with pockets, crafted in durable canvas cotton, featuring LOEWE Anagram-embossed leather patch on breast panel" priced at $950 a pop.
That said, the shirt is still on sale at Ssense, a fashion e-commerce website.
The black-and-white ensemble reportedly had a pattern of stripes and “prominent chest patches” that looked just like the concentration camp uniforms, Diet Prada noted.
“Unable to see anything but concentration camp uniforms in this $1,840 ensemble from @loewe‘s William De Morgan capsule, a collection meant to ‘capture a freedom of imagination,'” they told their 1.6 million Instagram followers. “There’s not actually much left to the imagination when the resulting look is so uncannily disturbing.”
Observers agreed with Diet Prada, expressing their own outrage in the comments section.
“This just baffles me. How the f – – k does an entire team of people overlook such a similarity in design to the most horrifying event of the 20th century,” one commented. “This is deeply upsetting,” another added. “Wow, this is one of the poorest taste I’ve seen in a while,” a third wrote.
In the past, Urban Outfitters and Zara have also been called out for similar outfits, the blog pointed out. In 2014, Zara was forced to pull a pair of controversial pajamas, and in 2015, UO was accused of selling tapestry "eerily reminiscent" of Holocaust uniforms.
Jonathan Anderson, Loewe's creative director, had recently spoken about the capsule collection and called it similar to the “fantasy” of “Harry Potter.”
“It’s fantasy — but an odd type of fantasy,” he said. “There’s something which I think, in a weird way, has a sort of wizardry about it. Kind of like an early ‘Harry Potter.’ ”
Meanwhile, Vogue France described it as “the most artistic collection of the season.”