It's been another weird week in retail.
A set of children's Halloween costumes came under fire for hitting way off the mark, Pizza Hut released an oven-like parka to help keep superfans warm and disastrous denim is back with a pair of ‘thong jeans' from Thibaut.
This, and more, in this week's Retail Therapy.
These Halloween costumes are more than just child's play
As we mentioned last week, human horse hooves and 'Border babe' costumes are pretty bad. But that's just adult humor, right? Wrong.
Several children's Halloween costumes came under fire this week for being too inappropriate or too offensive — especially to be worn by the kid next door.
Take the "Girls Midnight Mischief" costume, for example. Reported by Teen Vogue, the outfit takes the general idea of a witch's garb and turns it into something you'd expect to find on a 23 year-old instead of on a grade-school child. Maybe parents are too sensitive about what girls wear — or maybe they just don't want to see their kid in a "corset bodice" and "glovelettes" that say "she's up to no good."
Someone would have to do something really insensitive to make this any worse, right?
Like make a "Fun World Burning Dead Zombie Child" costume just a few months after the Grenfell Tower fire in London. Or turn Anne Frank into a Halloween costume for kids to "play the role of a World War II hero," as press herald reports.
We can think of only one good thing to come of these woefully ill thought-out costumes: Every low-effort parent hiding a pumpkin costume in the closet has got to feel way better about their choices than these designers do.
Yeah this seems super uncool. You seen this @carlosgeADL ? pic.twitter.com/uhKS3g9b2J
— Jerod MacDonald-Evoy (@JerodMacEvoy) October 15, 2017
Winter fashion is easy as (pizza) pie
It can be hard to stay warm in the cool months ahead, but Pizza Hut has a plan to keep any pie-lover toasty as an oven, Marketing Dive reports.
In a move reminiscent of Pizza Hut high tops, the fast food chain has cooked up a Pizza Parka with "Heat Lover's triple-layer insulation with 3M Thinsulate," "oven-hot lining," and many other pizza-laden references.
"What better way to showcase how hot our new delivery system keeps our pizzas than outfitting some of our biggest fans with a winter parka made from the same materials," Pizza Hut's Vice President of Marketing Zipporah Allen said. "The Pizza Parka is going to keep the lucky recipients hot in the same cold-weather elements that our pizzas often endure on the delivery trip from our restaurants to their front doors."
How did we make it this long without knowing the warm embrace of a pizza delivery box?
The denim market is bursting at the seams
The denim market crashed and burned long ago, but over the past couple of weeks it's rested in relative peace. Alas, this week Amazon Fashion Week in Tokyo brought the abominable trend back to life.
From the ashes of denim's once-glorious run, Japanese brand Thibaut has helped the "thong" jeans rise, although they are sadly not for sale yet, Daily Mail reports.
What exactly are thong jeans? Imagine taking a pair of jeans, identifying the main seams and then cutting out everything that does not fall into that category.
What's left? A thong-like covering framed by two out-of-place seams running down the side. If that's not fashionable denim, we don't know what is.
Thong jeans now exist so let’s officially get the apocalypse rolling pic.twitter.com/V9y5eA5LsQ
— Oksana Vig (@OksanaVig) October 19, 2017
H&M goes wild over trademark infringement
If we're ranking generic team names, "Wildcats" tops the list. But it's not wildcats that have H&M lashing out — it's Wildfox Couture.
The fast-fashion retailer recently filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles-based brand, claiming that it isn't infringing federal trademark law by releasing a "Toronto Wildfox" sweater, the Fashion Law reports. (The best defense is a good offense, right?).
According to the report, H&M "selected the name 'Wildfox' arbitrarily as the name of a fictitious team based in Toronto" and said "the Basketball Design appears on one style sweatshirt, the H&M Motif Sweatshirt, sold under the H&M brand."
Really, we don't know what Wildfox is upset about it. After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery.
