NEW YORK CITY, New York: American Eagle Outfitters, a popular U.S. clothing brand, wanted to grab attention with its new fall advertising campaign featuring 27-year-old actress Sydney Sweeney.
The campaign, built around bold and cheeky language, was designed to spark conversations, according to the company’s chief marketing officer. It has done just that — but not always in the way the company might have hoped.
The campaign is titled “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” Some ads used wordplay, swapping “jeans” with “genes,” a reference to Sweeney’s blonde hair and blue eyes. This caused a backlash. Critics said the word choice seemed to echo ideas linked to eugenics, a discredited theory that claimed humanity could be “improved” through selective breeding for specific physical traits.
Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, said the campaign might not have faced such criticism if it had featured models of different races making the same pun. “This could be seen as ignorance, laziness, or intentional,” he said. “None of those options are good.”
Other voices defended the campaign and dismissed the backlash as an overreaction. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that critics were only giving Sweeney more publicity, saying the controversy had “only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes.'”
American Eagle has not responded publicly to the criticism.
The controversy comes at a challenging time for the retailer. Like many fashion brands, American Eagle is struggling with weaker consumer spending and higher costs due to tariffs. Sales for the February-to-April quarter fell five percent compared to last year. However, when Sweeney’s partnership was announced, the company’s stock rose more than four percent in one day. By midweek this week, shares had fallen again, trading nearly two percent lower.
Experts say the company’s strategy is not unusual. Alan Adamson, co-founder of marketing firm Metaforce, explained that clothing brands often try to stand out with bold campaigns. He compared the Sweeney ads to Calvin Klein’s famous 1980 commercials featuring 15-year-old Brooke Shields, which sparked controversy over suggestive wording. “It’s the same playbook: a beautiful model saying provocative things, shot in an eye-catching way,” Adamson said.
American Eagle’s chief marketing officer Craig Brommers described Sweeney as “the biggest get in the history of American Eagle” in an interview with industry site Retail Brew. He said the company wanted to promote her partnership in a big, bold way.
The campaign includes videos of Sweeney in relaxed-fit jeans, digital billboards in places like Times Square, social media appearances on Snapchat and Instagram, and even an AI-powered feature that lets shoppers virtually try on jeans. The company is also releasing a special limited-edition “Sydney” jean, with part of the sales going to a nonprofit that provides crisis counseling for domestic violence victims.
In its press release, American Eagle described Sweeney’s appeal as a mix of “girl-next-door charm” and “main character energy,” adding that her playful personality made her the perfect fit for the campaign.