Does This $68 T-Shirt Design Resemble Neo-Nazi Band’s Album Cover?

Should this design get the boot?

Should this design get the boot?

What is it about highly controversial designs that summon up dark moments in humanity’s past that are just so darn attractive to designers and retailers? To wit: A $68 Marc by Marc Jacobs T-shirt currently sold by Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s and many others bears an image that closely mirrors that used on an album cover by Neo-Nazi skinhead band, Skrewdriver.

As first noted by a Gawker tipster, the shirt on the left looks a whole lot like Skrewdriver’s image, which was used on the album cover for the 1987 12″ EP Boots And Braces. The band is now kaput, but the fact remains that it was a white power band aligned with the neo-Nazi movement in Britain.

Marc Jacobs isn’t the first company to (accidentally, we hope) get mixed up in some bad imagery: Walmart got tangled up in a controversy over Nazi iconography on one of its shirts back in 2007-2008, while Target slipped up and used the flag favored by Spain’s murderous dictator, General Francisco Franco on a shirt in 2010.

We’ve reached out to Marc Jacobs for comment on the shirt and will update this post with any further news. But in the meantime, what do you think?

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.