According to the Washington Post, Bstroy, founded in 2012 by Brick Owens and Dieter "Du" Grams of Atlanta, revealed the controversial pieces from its upcoming spring collection during New York Fashion Week.
The company took to social media to share photos of the line, including shirts bearing the names Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas, Virginia Tech and Columbine – all sites of deadly mass shootings. The distressed shirts are riddled with holes.
The Vicki Soto Memorial Fund, dedicated to a teacher killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, slammed the brand in an Instagram comment.
"As a Sandy Hook family, what you are doing here is absolutely disgusting, hurtful, wrong and disrespectful," the comment read. "You'll never know what our family went through after Vicki died protecting her students. Our pain is not to be used for your fashion."
Frank Guttenberg, the father of Parkland, Florida, shooting victim Jaime Guttenberg, also panned the designers in a tweet.
"If any of my followers [know] anybody involved with this clothing line, please ask them to stop it immediately," he wrote.
Under what scenario could somebody think this was a good idea? This has me so upset. If any of my followers no anybody involved with this clothing line, please ask them to stop it immediately.https://t.co/VzAlog0TCt
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) September 17, 2019
Owens told "Today" that the line was meant as "a comment on gun violence and the type of gun violence that needs preventative attention."
He also shared the following on his Instagram page:
"Sometimes life can be painfully ironic," the post read. "Like the irony of dying violently in a place you considered to be a safe, controlled environment, like school. We are reminded all the time of life's fragility, shortness and unpredictability, yet we are also reminded of its infinite potential. It is this push and pull that creates the circular motion that is the cycle of life."
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