People are Furious at These New Shirts from KyIie and Kendall Jenner
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The controversial T-shirts that Kendall and Kylie Jenner were selling on their website were removed Thursday after receiving backlash on social media, and getting blasted by a deceased rap icon's mother.
Kendell + Kylie - kendall-kylie.com
The sisters were selling "one of a kind, individually hand-picked vintage T-shirts" with the faces of music icons on them, including Tupac, the Notorious B.I.G., Ozzy Osbourne, and more.
The shirts feature them with their faces super-imposed over artists, and were reportedly sold for $125 dollars.
Some people on Twitter pointed to the shirts featuring hip hop artists, as another way the Jenner sisters were making money from appropriating black culture.
Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace's mother, Voletta Wallace, blasted the shirts on her Instagram account claiming that Kylie and Kendall's company had not contacted her son's estate for permission to use her son's likeness on the clothing items.
"The disrespect of these girls to not even reach out to me or anyone connected to the estate baffles me," she wrote in the post on Thursday. "I have no idea why they feel they can exploit the deaths of 2pac and my Son Christopher to sell a t-shirt."
Kendall and Kylie both posted apologies to their Twitter accounts, writing that these "designs were not well-thought out."
The Jenner and Kardashian family have been accused of exploiting black culture for personal gain in the past.
After an announcement that Kylie would sell a line of camouflage print bikinis in early June, blogger Perez Hilton credited the social media celebrity with starting a new trend.
However, other users responded that black artists, notably Destiny's Child, had made camouflage bikinis popular more than a decade ago.
She was also accused of stealing the design of the camouflage print bikinis from a black designer.
Kim Kardashian West was also recently accused of using black culture to sell products and of using blackface in an advertisement for her makeup kit.
West ended up apologizing for the photo in an interview with The New York Times.
“I was really tan when we shot the images, and it might be that the contrast was off,” she told New York Times. “But I showed the image to many people, to many in the business. No one brought that to our attention. No one mentioned it.”
Hopefully, this latest snafu will help the family stay out of hot water in the future.
