A Converse ad featuring K-pop star Karina has been pulled, and the company is apologizing, after viewers said the image looked like a Ku Klux Klan hood with a pair of feet hanging beneath it.
“We’re sorry. We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong,” Converse said in a statement to Footwear News. “We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened, and we will do better.”
The image was posted on Converse’s Threads account on Sept. 3 to promote the Chuck 70 X, a new version of the brand’s classic high top. It featured Karina, a member of the girl group aespa and Converse’s new global ambassador, wearing an oversized white skirt and holding a pair of black sneakers at her side. The lighting and fabric formed a tall, pointed white shape directly above the shoes, which hung below it. Once people saw a Klan hood over dangling feet, they could not unsee it.
Fitness creator Kida Maree posted the image and said no one should ever look at an advertisement and immediately think of “Strange Fruit,” Billie Holiday’s 1939 song about the lynching of Black people in the South. Others questioned how the image made it through a marketing process that takes months of planning and multiple rounds of approval, and some said Converse would not get another dollar from them.
The backlash grew when people connected the Converse ad to a second campaign image. That one, from a collaboration with Danish brand Palmes, shows a man on a ladder holding a pair of sneakers overhead near a tree. Critics posted the two images side by side and said the combination of a tree, a ladder and hanging shoes was a pattern, not a coincidence. Converse’s apology addresses the Karina image, and the company has not said anything publicly about the Palmes image.
Not everyone read the image the same way. Some people pointed to the ad’s caption, “Under stage lights or streetlights, the star always finds the frame,” and argued the lighting was meant to echo the star in Converse’s logo. There is no evidence the imagery was intentional, and Converse has not explained what the creative team was going for.
Converse, which is owned by Nike, is the latest major brand to apologize for imagery Black audiences found offensive. H&M apologized in 2018 after putting a Black child in a hoodie that read “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle,” and Gucci pulled a sweater in 2019 after its design was compared to blackface.
Converse has not said who approved the ad or what it plans to change to keep something like this from happening again.
