"Is Courting Controversy An Urban Outfitters Strategy?"

""It's happening too frequently to be an accident," Mudd says. "It's certainly intentional, and perhaps part of their brand strategy and positioning."

There is plenty of evidence to support that conclusion. (We reached out to Urban Outfitters for insight, and will update this post with any responses.) Here's a nowhere-near-exhaustive list ofthe company's cultural firebombs: the menacingly yellow "Chinese Man Costume" (1998); the"Ghettopoly" board game (2003); the "Everybody Loves a Jewish Girl" dollar-signs T-shirt (2004); the "New Mexico: Cleaner Than Regular Mexico" T-shirt (2005); the "Navajo Hipster Panties"(part of a collection, 2011); the Irish apparel line and the Holocaust-recalling star T-shirt (2012)...Could it be purposely trying to drive off the parents of these undesirable high schoolers, presuming that its slightly older and more financially independent customers will "get" the joke?"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/12/16/370329870/is-courting-controversy-an-urban-outfitters-strategy

Ugh. I like irony sort of broadly and generally because I think it provides room to figure things out, but it also provides cover to do things that are problematic. And I sort of think people sometimes need a second to be problematic to understand that it feels weird and back away from it - but not everyone is looking to learn a lesson. 

Related: "A Complete Guide to 'Hipster Racism'"