NEW YORK (JTA) — A Danish fashion company has apologized for a T-shirt featuring a six-pointed star after critics complained it evoked the Star of David that the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
The yellow T-shirt, which featured a blue patchwork star on its pocket, appeared on the Urban Outfitters retail website last week. It drew a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League, which urged the retailer to remove the shirt from its online catalogue.
Wood Wood, the Danish fashion company that designed the shirt, said the star appeared on a prototype of the T-shirt and was removed after concerns were raised. It said that Urban Outfitters made an error in displaying the early sample T-shirt.
Brian SS Jensen, co-founder of Wood Wood, said in a public statement that “this is no way a reference to Judaism, Nazism or the Holocaust." He also said "I am sorry if anyone was offended seeing the shirt, it was of course never our intention to hurt any feelings with this.”
The ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, expressed appreciation for the company’s reassurances.
“We are pleased that the company recognized early on the shirt’s potentially offensive imagery and changed the design so the six-pointed star-shaped logo would no longer appear,” he said in a statement.
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