School shooting inspired sweatshirts spark outrage

Earlier this week, New York based brand called Bstroy came under fire for their latest Spring 2020 collection. The main triggering aspect were the sweatshirts that they debuted.

There were 4 sweatshirts, each with the name of an educational institution with manufactured holes on them. These institutions were namely Sandy Hook, Columbine, Virginia Tech and Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

The problem here is, each of those educational institutions once fell victim to mass shootings in the past years. This was the reason behind the uproar. After pictures were posted online, majority of the social media audience found these offensive.

“I lived through this … to make money off of something pathetic like this is disgusting,” said Angelina Lazo, a survivor from the shooting at Stoneman Douglas. There were several more comments by many other survivors of mass shootings, calling these disgusting and a way for this brand to profit off of their trauma.

Whatever idea the designers, Brick Owens and Duey Catorze had behind creating such pieces it clearly didn’t seem to go as planned.

Brick Owens however responded to these criticisms saying,

“Sometimes life can be painfully ironic. Like the irony of dying violently in a place you consider to be a safe, controlled environment, like school.”

Catorze on the other hand said,

“We wanted to make a comment on gun violence and the type of gun violence that needs preventative attention and what its origins are, while also empowering the survivors of tragedy through storytelling in the clothes.”

Read our previous article:
Cultural appropriation: no big deal right?

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