“We regret any unintended offence it may have caused”.
American clothing firm J. Crew have stopped selling a St Patrick’s Day-themed t-shirt after they received complaints that it’s “offensive” to the Irish community.
The shirt features a stylised map of the Republic of Ireland with words such as ‘beer’, ‘whiskey’ and ‘more beer’ on it.
However, the main point of ire has been the omission of the remaining Irish counties on the shirt. As you can see below, the design doesn’t include the counties of Northern Ireland.
In a statement that was released to JOE, J. Crew said that: “This product has been removed from sale and we regret any unintended offence it may have caused.”
Founded in 1947, the company operates 575 retail stores, including 281 J.Crew stores, 113 Madewell stores, and 181 J.Crew Factory (including 39 J.Crew Mercantile) outlet locations, as reported in 2017.
This isn’t the first time that a t-shirt with an Irish interest caused something of a controversy with an American retailer. Target stopped selling these designs that also excluded the six counties.
As for J. Crew, were alerted to the design via the following tweet.
Hey, @jcrew, it's great that you're doing an Irish t-shirt for St Patrick’s Day, but this is offensive, bordering on obnoxious, for a couple of reasons. I'll let you figure it out for yourselves, but showing the design to any Irish person would have helped. 😢 pic.twitter.com/goAieDEawP
— Francis X Kennedy (@FXKennedy) February 17, 2019
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