Within months of social media pundits shutting down Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad, the reality star and her sister Kylie could potentially lose another check over alleged cultural insensitivity.
Recently, the duo introduced a selectionoflimited edition vintage music T-shirts from their Kendall + Kylie clothing collection. The shirts, which retail for $125, feature artists like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur -- the latter two artists were killed in drive by-shootings in 1997 and 1996, respectively.
It’s the shirt with Tupac’s image, which has the sisters’ double K logo and photos on top, that has Twitter and Instagram all worked up. The shirt reads at the top: “2 PAC 1971-1996” and at the bottom: “Keeping Up With the Kardashians star’s Instagram stats.”
The T-shirts featuring their faces superimposed over some of music’s most classic albums and artists has been described as disrespectful and distasteful.
someone please get kendall & kylie and get them out of business like YOU GONNA DISRESPECT PINK FLOYD & TUPAC LIKE THAT? pic.twitter.com/fL8rmryZdD
— LYSS (@Lyssuhh7) June 28, 2017
kendall and kylie actually had the nerve to put their face and initials over tupac, biggie, pink floyd, metallica, led zeppelin, and kiss pic.twitter.com/ko4pWnDnDa
— cierra (@magdaIima) June 29, 2017
The T-shirts even garnered a response from Vonetta Wallace, Biggie’s mom, who called the shirts featuring her son exploitation.
Even though the criticism seems to be far and wide, Entertainment Weekly reported. that the shirts were selling out.
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Hours after the collection was revealed, a top featuring Kendall’s face superimposed over the image of Tupac and Biggie’s “Trust Nobody” was already in dwindling supply.
As of Thursday evening, Kylie and Kendall Jenner each posted a statement on Twitter issuing an apology for the shirts and said that they have been pulled.
“These designs were not well thought out and we deeply apologize to anyone that has been upset and/or offended, especially to the families of the artists,” they said in the statement. “We are huge fans of their music and it was not our intention to disrespect these cultural icons in anyway (sic). The tee (sic) shirts have been pulled from retail and all images have been removed. We will use this as an opportunity to learn from these mistakes and again, we are very sorry.”
— Kendall (@KendallJenner) June 29, 2017
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) June 29, 2017
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