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Fashion

Great Genes Or Great Misstep? Why The Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle Campaign Missed The Mark

Vintage inspos, denim, and a PR storm: Is Sydney Sweeney’s campaign just fashion or subtle racism in the year 2025?

| Vishakha Punjabi
Sydney Sweeney

Every once in a while, a fashion campaign comes along that’s meant to be cheeky, nostalgic —even iconic— and instead spirals into an online spectacle. Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad was exactly that.

On paper, it had all the makings of a viral denim moment: faded blues, throwback Y2K styling, and a wink‑wink tagline that read “Sydney Sweeney has great genes jeans,” designed as a playful pun, referencing both denim and genetics. Instead, it sparked a social media storm, with critics calling it “tone-deaf” and even evoking “eugenics propaganda.”


It didn’t feel like harmless wordplay but more like a whisper from fashion’s past that we all thought we’d moved on from. Here’s why the campaign was considered tone-deaf and out of taste in the current times.

Eugenics Echoed In Wordplay

The campaign’s script explicitly links genetic traits, such as blue eyes and blonde hair, to the idea of “great genes”. While intended as light-hearted, many found it uncomfortably close to language historically used in eugenic rhetoric, which promoted racial hierarchies based on physical attributes.

As one post on X pointed out, “Maybe I’m too woke, but choosing a blonde, blue‑eyed actress to say ‘great genetics’ is insane.” Another: “The word offspring was the nail in the coffin. Straight up propaganda vibes.” This isn’t just nitpicking. When you’re marketing in 2025, you can’t casually play with language that’s been weaponised to define the 'beauty standards' we have worked ages to break from. Critics argue that fashion marketing cannot afford to flirt with such messaging in today’s climate. 

Recreation Or Racism?

Observers drew parallels between this ad and Calvin Klein’s controversial 1980s campaign featuring Brooke Shields. That campaign, too, blurred the line between genetics and desirability, where Shields' infamous ads packaged inherited beauty as aspirational. Back then, it was provocative. Today, it feels like déjà vu with a sour aftertaste.

It’s not that nostalgia is the villain here. 2000s fashion is everywhere; we are all well aware of the cyclical nature of fashion, and we love a good throwback. But nostalgia without self‑awareness? That’s where it tips from retro aesthetics to out-of-touch marketing.

So, while nostalgia or vintage references are currently a strong trend in fashion, this execution felt exclusionary. The ad placed a singular focus on a conventionally attractive white woman as the epitome of “good genetics”, clashing with the industry’s wider efforts to embrace diversity. In an era where campaigns are expected to reflect a spectrum of beauty, this felt dated and out of touch.

A viral Reddit thread summed it up perfectly: “This is what happens when you don’t have people of colour in the room. Anyone outside that bubble would’ve seen it instantly.” Fashion doesn’t exist in a vacuum anymore. A campaign isn’t just an image—it’s a statement. And right now, every image is interrogated for what it says about beauty, race and power.

Celebrity Accountability In Modern Marketing

Though Sweeney herself did not script or direct the campaign, her image was front and centre. Social media criticism quickly shifted from the brand to the actress, reflecting how celebrity endorsements now carry an implicit expectation of cultural awareness and responsibility.

This isn’t her first brush with controversy either. Just weeks ago, she released a novelty soap allegedly made from her own bathwater. Social media had a field day, with comments about how something like this takes feminism back 100 years. 

Sweeney defended it with humour –“It was my idea… weird in the best way,” she laughed at a premiere. But when you string these moments together – the bathwater stunt, the denim ad – it paints a picture of a star whose marketing keeps tiptoeing into the bizarre and provocative.

Fashion Has Been Here Before

This controversy is not isolated. Fashion history is riddled with campaigns that failed to read the room quite a few times:

Pepsi x Kendall Jenner (2017): 

via GIPHY

What was pitched as a campaign about “unity” ended up trivialising real‑life protests. In the ad, Jenner leaves a photoshoot to join a street march, handing a can of Pepsi to a police officer as tensions ease. The internet immediately called it out for attempting to monetise the imagery of 'Black Lives Matter' and anti‑police brutality demonstrations. Pepsi pulled it within 24 hours, but not before it became a textbook case of brands co‑opting social justice for aesthetics.

Dolce & Gabbana Shanghai ads (2018):

Meant to celebrate the brand’s fashion show in China, the campaign instead depicted a Chinese woman awkwardly attempting to eat pizza and cannoli with chopsticks while a male voiceover mocked her clumsiness. Many saw it as offensive stereotyping. When criticism surged, the founders’ leaked messages insulting Chinese consumers pushed the fallout further. The brand’s planned Shanghai show was cancelled, costing millions.

Burberry “Noose” Hoodie (2019):

Sydney Sweeny
Presented on a runway, the piece featured a drawstring shaped like a noose. Mental health advocates slammed it for evoking suicide imagery, particularly in an industry already grappling with conversations about mental well-being. Burberry’s apology did little to shake off criticism that no one in the design process recognised the issue until it was too late..

Each of these missteps had different aesthetics and messages, but the underlying problem was the same: campaigns were designed in silos, with little consideration of the broader cultural climate. Much like American Eagle’s “great genes” moment, these ads weren’t just poor taste – they exposed how disconnected fashion marketing can become when it doesn’t account for lived realities and public perception. Although it's high time for fashion to have a clear cultural memo. 

The Fashion Takeaway

What was intended as playful nostalgia for American Eagle and Sweeney instead became a lesson in the perils of tone-deaf marketing. Fashion thrives on reinvention and references to the past, but in an era where diversity and inclusion shape brand identity, nostalgic aesthetics must be carefully balanced with modern sensitivities.

Ultimately, this controversy underscores how marketing, particularly in fashion, cannot separate style from the social context it inhabits. A pun, a retro visual, or a single casting choice can carry unintended weight—and in today’s cultural climate, even the smallest detail can spark an outsized impact.

Also read: 

Sydney Sweeney's Bathwater: Polarising Enough To Divide Feminists?

Brands Are Turning Thirst Traps Into Marketing Gold

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