Story by Steve Han.
Upscale home furnishing and fashion retailer Pottery Barn took its Halloween costumes of a sushi chef and a kimono off their shelves following complaints from an Asian American civil rights group.
Pottery Barn issued a formal apology late Monday and confirmed that the items were removed from its Pottery Barn Kids website.
“We did not intend to offend anyone with our Halloween costumes and we apologize,” said Leigh Oshirak, vice president of public relations and marketing for Williams-Sonoma, parent company of Pottery Barn.
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A group of Asian American civil rights activists demanded “immediate removal” of the clothing and request an apology from Pottery Barn as the retailer began selling Japanese traditional clothing, kimono, and a sushi chef outfit that had the Rising Sun flag on it.
“It’s not that ethnic dress is offensive. What we find problematic is packaging this type of dress as a costume,” Ling Woo Liu, director of strategic communications for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, told the Los Angeles Times.
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“Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are real people who cannot and should not be commodified as costumes,” Liu added.
This story was originally published in iamkoream.com
