'Holocaust' T-shirt gets yellow card

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Published time: April 24, 2012 09:50
Edited time: April 25, 2012 12:51

Fashion retailer Urban Outfitters has caused a storm of outrage by unveiling a yellow T-shirt with a six-point star, bearing a strong resemblance to the notorious yellow badge Jews had to wear under the Nazi regime.

­Jewish groups have decried the designers’ latest “flight of fancy” saying it is a clear reference to the Holocaust. The controversial T-shirt, worth $100 and manufactured by Dutch label Wood Wood, first appeared on the Urban Outfitters website last week – very close, in fact, to Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“We find this use of symbolism to be extremely distasteful and offensive, and we are outraged that your company would make this product available to your customers,” Barry Morrison, director of The Anti-Defamation League fighting anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry in the US and abroad, commented.

After an avalanche of criticism, T-shirt creator Wood Wood said that their signature star-shape embroidery was only meant to appear only on a prototype of the shirt, not on the final product.

It’s not the first time Urban Outfitters has caused a scandal this year. Earlier, Irish Americans condemned the brand for its trademark T-shirts saying “Kiss me I’m Irish, or drunk, or whatever", and “Irish Yoga”, while the Navajo Nation, one of the country's largest native American tribes, sued the company for its Navajo underwear and liquor flasks, which members of the tribe saw as “derogatory and scandalous”.