Chic fashion brand Loewe has been slammed for selling a black and white striped outfit that people have likened to a Nazi concentration camp uniform, the New York Post has reported.
The Madrid-based luxury fashion company has been forced to pull their near-$2,000 (£1,500) outfit from their recent William De Morgan capsule collection.
After posting the jacket and pants combo to their online store and social media pages, the company was branded insensitive to victims and survivors of the WWII atrocity that claimed the lives of over six million people.
This isn't the first time a fashion brand has had to pull a product for this very reason:The apparel has since been pulled from their website, but can still be found elsewhere online. Prior to being removed, the description for the $950 (£740) "Stripe Workwear Jacket White/Black" read:
"Boxy workwear-inspired jacket with pockets, crafted in durable canvas cotton, featuring LOEWE Anagram-embossed leather patch on breast panel."
Before the backlash, designer Jonathan Anderson spoke with British Vogue about his collection, describing the look as "fantasy – but an odd type of fantasy". He added:
"There’s something which I think, in a weird way, has a sort of wizardry about it. Kind of like an early Harry Potter."
However, Loewe was immediately called out by Instagram page Diet Prada, who wrote that they were "unable to see anything but concentration camp uniforms".
Writing to their 1.6 million followers, Diet Prada said:
"With the particular stripe proportions and layout, uniform-style garments, and prominent chest patches, there’s not actually much left to the imagination when the resulting look is so uncannily disturbing. Fast fashion retailers like Urban Outfitters and Zara have had similar products slip through the cracks, which were generally blamed on third-party vendors and swiftly destroyed."
Upon seeing the outfit, many Instagram users slammed the company for letting outfit hit their store.
Per The Sun one user posted: "As a someone who's family been forced wearing these during WWII - this is absolutely disgusting that someone still can't add 1 plus 1 and decide that this is atrocious and inhuman."
Another user typed: "This just baffles me. How the f*** does an entire team of people overlook such a similarity in design to the most horrifying event of the 20th century."
And another wrote: "Unbelievable why anyone would ever try to emulate this look, and not see the horrific parallels. This is truly a design that needs to be left alone forever, it’s never going to be ok."
Responding to the upset, Loewe has since said in a statement, they wrote that the design had been "misconstrued as referring to one of the most odious moments in the history of mankind."
Loewe added: "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."