Anyone who attended an HBCU knows that the Divine 9 doesn’t play and it was a lesson that Ralph Lauren had to learn the hard way. More details inside…
On Monday (Jan. 6) Watch The Yard.com reported that Ralph Lauren was selling pants with the Phi Beta Sigma lettering on its France site for $335. The site contacted the Greek fraternity and other Divine 9 members to reach out to the luxury lifestyle giant and ask them to remove the garments.
Realizing their blunder, Ralph Lauren issued a swift apology, while ensuring that the chino pants would be removed.
“Earlier today we published a story about pants, which are being sold for 299.99€ on Ralph Lauren’s site with Phi Beta Sigma printed on them. Within three hours of us reporting on the story, an official Ralph Lauren spokesperson reached out to Watch The Yard and told us that they are taking the pants off of all sales channels and gave us an exclusive statement explaining themselves.”
In a statement issued exclusively to the site, the company states that the lettering was added as oversight and that the company was taking proper measures to ensure that the incident doesn’t happen again.
“The use of these symbols on our products was an oversight for which we deeply apologize. We are immediately taking action to remove the product from our sales channels. While we have a rigorous review process in place for all of our designs, this has prompted us to take another review of our protocols to help ensure that this does not happen again,” the company said in the statement. “As an American brand with more than 50 years of heritage, Ralph Lauren is inspired by many facets of American culture. As part of this, we are firmly committed to the respectful and appropriate use of all cultural icons and insignias.”
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