Urban Outfitters pulled a crop top emblazoned with the word “Depression” Sunday after coming under fire for appearing to make light of a mental illness. Angry consumers rushed to Twitter and Facebook to lodge complaints. Many of them paired the photo of the crop top with that of a T-shirt Urban Outfitters pulled in 2010 that reads “Eat Less.”
Urban tweeted that it “heard” the outcry and was removing the item from its site:
It also explained that “Depression” was the name of the small brand that made the shirt, not a reference to the disease:
The next day the firm apologized:
The retailer has a history of pulling outfits due to cultural insensitivity. Some examples include: a 2004 shirt that reads “Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl” surrounded by money signs and shopping bags, a 2005 shirt that read “New Mexico, Cleaner than the Real Mexico,” a 2010 shirt in “Obama Black,” and a 2012 shirt sporting a Jewish star, “reminiscent of the what Nazis made Jews wear during the Holocaust.