This week Kendall and Kylie Jenner released a new line of T-shirts with a unique marketing strategy; pasting their own faces over the most influential rap and rock artists of all time.
The Tees were released on the sister’s online website last Wednesday and retailed for $125. They feature iconic images of Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Pink Floyd, the Doors, Kiss and Led Zeppelin overlaid with Instagram shots of the model/reality star siblings. The sentence “Repurposed in the USA” was printed on each piece. After facing scathing backlash, the shirts have been taken down from the site.
Most of the images on the shirts were taken without authorization from the artists’s estates. On Thursday afternoon, the Jenner sisters posted identical tweets apologizing for their mistake. “These designs were not well thought out and we deeply apologize to anyone that has been upset and/or offended, especially to the families of the artists. We are huge fans of their music and it was not our intention to disrespect these cultural icons in anyway [sic]. The tee shirts have been pulled from retail and all images have been removed. We will use this as an opportunity to learn from these mistakes and again, we are very sorry.”