Matalan dismisses racism claims over 'monkey onesie'
Matalan has hit back at accusations of racism after the retailer had two black children pose in monkey onesies for the catalogue.
Two black kids wore monkey onsies in the two page display
Twitter users expressed shock at the image showing a group of eight kids dressed in animal onesies, as the ad’s only two black children were alone in wearing monkey costumes.
This caused a wave of outrage online raising questions of racist intent at the clothing retailer. The two children wore the ‘Boys Novelty Monkey Sherpa Fleece Onesie’ wheras the other six white models wore a range of costumes of a bunny, a lady bird and an Angry Bird.
Flicking through my @Matalan book & I come across this...they really put the Black kids in the Monkey Onesies?! #Rude pic.twitter.com/ZASV3KHMBQ
— FlyyBlkGrl (@FlyyBlkGrl) September 27, 2014
The image came across as racist for some social media users with images from the catalog being quickly retweeted on the social network.
However, others accepted that the photoshoot was merely an unfortunate accident for Matalan.
The firm released a statement addressing the photoshoot: “Regarding the onesie models in our latest mailer: We regularly work with the boys and they chose their outfits.
“They enjoyed the day and it's very sad this has been turned into a race issue.”
One commenter claimed that only racists themselves would have seen anything wrong with kids dressed in animal onsies in a page solely devoted to selling such products.
Twitter last month decimated Zara after it released a stripey boy’s sheriff top, complete with a star badge, which bore a remarkable resemblance to a Holocaust prisoner outfit.