International clothing retail giant H&M has been in the news over the past week for obviously the wrong reasons. To give a brief synopsis of what happened, they actually thought it would be an awesome idea to have a black kid model in a hoodie with a “coolest monkey in the jungle” text inscribed on it for one of their online marketing campaigns.
This not so overly well thought of idea attracted severe backlash on social media. To add more insult to injury, they issued a half-baked apology which didn’t sit so well with people. After intense pressure and loss of a few partnership deals – including Ethiopian-Canadian artist The Weeknd – they finally issued a formal apology and withdrew the hoodie from their shelves.
Some black artists from all over however used this hoodie fiasco to come out with some really super cool designs and use it as a basis to debunk the negative black stereotype, after all, black is absolutely beautiful and we’re all kings and queens! Enjoy these photos.
