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Photos of Santa Cruz Gap display for 1969 black denim, showing black jeans hanging from nooses #scsnews story coming pic.twitter.com/Z9opVEwpQh
— KaraMelinda (@karambutan) September 23, 2014
One Bay Area Gap has tried out an experimental window display, to deleterious effect. As NBC reports, the store opted to use black nooses to hang its "1969" jeans from the ceiling, making passersby uncomfortable. "1969 is the year after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated," explains NBC, who quoted one local resident as saying, "the rope itself does look like lynching and that's not OK." Gap is using the nooses to promote its new black denim line, which the company has been promoting with the slogan, "Black is a color."
So nooses: not great for clothing displays, like ever. No one looks at a noose and makes positive associations. One employee who went unnamed said that the decision to use the nooses was made by Gap corporate. NBC concludes their report with this: "the ropes do not have a 'hangman's knot,' some local African-Americans noted. So that's one plus." Dressing normal never looked so good.