Currently, the Swedish company Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) are involved in the most controversial scandal of 2018 so far. The famous clothing company are currently under fire for racism in a recent advertisement. H&M UK put up an advertisement on Monday January 8 on their website of what appeared to be a young, dark-skinned boy wearing a hoodie with the words "coolest monkey in the jungle" printed on it. In less than 24 hours the advertisement went viral on social media, sparking outrage from the public and celebrities such as Chris Brown, Diddy, and Lebron James.
An apology didn't seem to be enough
Since then, H&M has removed the advertisement from their website and cleared the £7.99 hoodie off shelves. The company has also made two lengthy apologies on social media. The first apology was posted on Tuesday January 9 expressing their sorrow and explaining that they are "investigating the current situation." Their second apology was also posted on Tuesday, expressing their sorrow again, and explaining that the situation was "accidental" and that "We have a responsibility to be aware of and attuned to all racial and cultural sensitives." The two Instagram posts have had a total of 400,000 likes and 70,000 comments so far but consequently, most of the comments aren't positive.
The CEO, Karl-Johan Persson, and the owner, Stefan Persson have yet to speak on the situation.
Celebrities end partnerships and show anger
H&M has also lost partnerships from A-list celebrities due to this scandal. On Tuesday, January 9, Canadian singer The Weeknd took to Twitter telling his 8.3 million Twitter followers that he would be cancelling his multi-million partnership with the company.
The Tweet racked up an impressive 125,000 retweets and 288,000 likes in one day.
Also, the American rapper G-Eazy has revealed in a lengthy Instagram post that he will no longer be working with H&M. "After seeing the disturbing image yesterday, my excitement over our global campaign quickly evaporated. H&M and other companies need to get on track and become racially and culturally aware."
The Instagram post now has more than 16,000 comments so far, mostly being positive comments.
The Hip-Hop mogul and successful multi-millionaire Sean Combs, often referred as Diddy, is offering the little boy who modeled the hoodie a whopping $1M modeling contract, according to Metro Magazine.
What do you think of the scandal?