Infamous Exclusion Fails: H&M Case Study

4 min readApr 2, 2024

H&M storefront

Content Warning: This article discusses racism

Organisation: H&M

Scenario

In 2018, Swedish fashion giant H&M was accused of being racist & ‘distasteful’ after a black child modelling a hoodie reading ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ featured on its website.

The controversy began after Charles M. Blow, columnist for The New York Times, shared on Twitter the promotional image of the shirt on the website with the comment: “Have you lost your mind?”.

In response to the columnist’s tweet, thousands of comments quickly emerged accusing H&M of racism and bad taste.

Why is this a problem

Racial Stereotyping: Historically, comparing black people to primates has been used as a dehumanising, racial slur for decades. This practice dates back to the era of colonialism and slavery when such derogatory comparisons were used to justify discrimination and oppression.

Ignorance and Insensitivity: The choice of this phrase on a black child’s hoodie demonstrated a lack of cultural awareness and sensitivity by H&M. It implied a tone-deaf approach to the historical and social context surrounding racism and racial discrimination.

Culturally Irresponsible: Companies have a responsibility to be culturally sensitive and aware of the potential impact of their marketing and advertising. The incident highlighted the importance of diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry and the need to upskill in cultural awareness and social issues.

Tangible impacts

In response to the poorly considered design, the impacts were swift.

#BoycottH&M was trending for ~1 month
Stores were trashed & H&M forced to close
$4.3B loss in relation to the incident
Operating profit fell 62% in the three months following
Celebrities pulled their endorsement

How they handled it

H&M issued a basic apology, withdrew the product from its stores, implemented a comprehensive review process to catch issues like this in future and installed a Head of Diversity & Inclusion (D&I).

However, this isn’t the company’s only controversy. See H&M faced backlash over its ‘monkey’ sweatshirt ad. It isn’t the company’s only controversy. — The Washington Post. It appears the company could do with some company-wide education on social issues.

Final Thoughts

A product goes through many stages before hitting a website i.e. design, production, quality control, photo shoots & finally, retail stores / online. This makes it all the more baffling.

While some people didn’t actively *do* anything, this incident serves as a reminder of the significance of cultural awareness and sensitivity in advertising and the potential consequences of not considering how our perspective gaps often don’t consider various historical and social contexts when creating marketing material.

While we support their moves to rectify similar issues happening again, we believe there are a few ways in which they could be better prepared, for example:

A Head of DEI is a good start, but this does put tremendous pressure on that individual to become literate in every cultural, racial, physical etc. need there is out there. We’d recommend working towards more of an integrated, company-wide culture of care and accountability.
In a world where we have access to new skills and education every single day, the response “it was not our intention” is no longer acceptable, especially when you serve a diverse customer base. Brands must take accountability for the impact, not the misplaced intention.
The addition of such a comprehensive process adds to the existing challenge of “it’s another thing to do” — a common hurdle for DEI efforts. We advocate for upskilling everybody so that the responsibility is distributed.
On that note, given the product (concept & physical), would have passed through many departments before making it to Twitter, it does raise the question of how open H&M are as a culture & whether or not they are open to dissent & employees speaking up.
If you read the SBS article linked below, you’ll see some comments attempting to extend understanding to H&M (e.g. “Perhaps it was an innocent mistake and no one even thought that they injected racism into the ad”). This type of ‘devil’s advocate’ attempt is called tone policing & often happens when folks from majority groups don’t understand the experiences of folks in non-dominant groups e.g. men / women, white / non-white, cisgender / transgender. When it comes to issues that affect an already marginalised demographic that you are not a part of, we strongly suggest listening before engaging in the conversation, if at all.

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