A fashion company is facing massive backlash after unveiling a range of sweatshirts designed with a mass school-shooting theme.
The latest line of streetwear was introduced to the public at the New York Fashion Week, which concluded over the weekend.
Emblazoned on the front of the hoodies are the names of places that have seen mass shootings — including Stoneman Douglas, Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook, according to South Florida Sun Sentinel. At issue is that the sweatshirts also feature detailing strongly resembling bullet holes.
The lead designers of the label Bstroy told Time that their intention for the spring line "Samsara" was to "comment on gun violence" while also "empowering the survivors of tragedy through storytelling in the clothes."
Survivors of the tragedies, as well as family members of the mass school-shooting victims, strongly opposed the designs.
Delaney Tarr, survivor of last year's Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parkland, said the sweatshirts were "disgusting" and "unacceptable" in a tweet.
"Bullet holes?? People died. People DIED," he wrote.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting, called for the public to speak out against the label and demand it put a stop to the new designs.
"Under what scenario could somebody think this was a good idea?," he wrote in a tweet. "This has me so upset. If any of my followers no anybody involved with this clothing line, please ask them to stop it immediately."
By way of explaining the motivation behind the designs, Grams and Owens said that "life can be painfully ironic," Time noted. "Like the irony of dying violently in a place you considered to be a safe, controlled environment, like school."
The new line is created around the Eastern concept of Samsara, which is the cycle of life, death and rebirth and the suffering that comes with attachments to the material world.
"Samsara is the cycle we must transcend to reach Nirvana," the designers said of their clothing range.
Broward School Board member Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was killed in the Parklands shooting, told WTVJ that the brand was promoting mass-violence and described the hoodies as "pretty sick and wrong." She said the designs were infuriating.
"It definitely angers me. It makes it very painful that somebody would want to profit by making sweatshirts with bullet holes in them and the name Stoneman Douglas."
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