Style Check | How low can fashion go? Rape row over Forever 21’s T-shirt far from first offence

You have to ask whether the multiple executives who sign off on scandalous clothing or campaigns intend them to be offensive or are guilty only of foolishness. Either way, it doesn’t wash

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Published: 12:45pm, 17 Mar 2016Updated: 2:04pm, 17 Mar 2016

Another week, another fashion faux pas. Sometimes it seems like the industry is forever wading through a minefield of political correctness, other times you wonder how certain levels of stupidity happen, especially when they’ve been signed off on multiple corporate levels.

The latest case veers towards the latter - mass market, fast fashion retailer Forever 21 has been called out for a slogan T-shirt that seemed to comment on rape culture. A men’s white T-shirt with the words “Don’t say maybe if you want to say no” emblazoned on the front has lit up Twitter and other social media sites for joking about issues of consent and rape.

The offending T-shirt by Forever 21. Photo: courtesy of Forever 21

It’s a risqué joke for the US high street retailer to make in any context. But considering the recent wave of high-profile college campus sexual assault cases that has plagued the United States and that this is brand largely markets to teenagers and college-age consumers , it seems especially dumb.

According to a recent survey conducted throughout US universities by the Association of American Universities, over 20 per cent of female students “experience sexual assault and sexual misconduct due to physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation by the time that they graduate”. So, even if it was meant as a bad joke , let’s have slow, sarcastic claps all round for Forever 21 please, for being so ignorantly inappropriate.

The T-shirt has now been pulled, but this isn’t the first time the retailer has landed itself publicly in hot water. It has been sued over 50 times for copyright infringement (appropriating other people’s designs, then passing them off as their own) as well as racking up a large number of labour complaints in its factories.

I’ll admit that some of the time, offensive slogans aren’t intentional but perhaps more a result of bad judgement or foolishness. And of course, it’s not just Forever 21 that owns embarrassing blunders. Let us recall some other incidents from the annals of fashion faux pas:

.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}Style Check | How low can fashion go? Rape row over Forever 21’s T-shirt far from first offence

Style Check | How low can fashion go? Rape row over Forever 21’s T-shirt far from first offence