American Eagle (AE) president and executive creative director Jennifer Foyle said the brand was looking for “a little mischief” with its latest campaign—but thus far, it’s proved less than “jean”-ius with customers.
Last week, the denim specialty retailer debuted “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” its Fall 2025 campaign starring the “Euphoria” actress. While the campaign aimed to highlight AE’s newest denim, shoppers were distracted by perceived undertones to the messaging.
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In one of the promotional videos, Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color…my jeans are blue [a nod to both the denim she’s wearing and her blue eyes],” followed by a voiceover stating, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
Almost immediately after the campaign went live, fans across social media tore apart the wording, posting comments like: “This is what happens when you have no [people] of color in a room. Particularly in a time like this…this ad campaign got so caught up in this ‘clever’ play on words and this stunt the [people] in the room missed what was so blatantly obvious to anyone not White.”
“I will be the friend that’s too woke because those American Eagle x Sydney Sweeney ads are weird…like fascist weird, like Nazi propaganda weird,” Midwesterngothic said in a TikTok video yesterday, taking issue with “a blond-haired, blue eyed, white woman…talking about her genes.”
Internet users are also accusing AE of ripping off Calvin Klein, specifically its 1980 ad starring supermodel Brooke Shields. In that campaign, a 14-year-old Shields is seen rolling on the floor, attempting to put on her jeans, while discussing how “the secret of life lies behind the genetic code.”
“Genes are fundamental in determining the characteristics of an individual, and passing on these characteristics to succeeding generations,” Shields said in the campaign. “Certain genes may fade away while others persist… which brings us to Calvin’s and the survival of the fittest.”
The difference between the two campaigns, however, is that AE’s is perceived as evoking a specific beauty standard—one historically tied to racial propaganda idealizing Aryan features such as blonde hair and blue eyes—according to Cyndee Harrison, principal at marketing and crisis communications firm Synaptic.
“When nostalgia gets selective, it gets risky. Brands have every right to lean into heritage or iconography, but they have a responsibility to vet for subtext,” Harrison told SJ Denim. “‘Great genes’, paired with a very specific beauty standard and the legacy of the Brooke Shields campaign evokes exclusion more than empowerment. Creative shouldn’t just pass legal review…it should pass cultural review. That means involving people with diverse perspectives at the table from concept to launch.”
While Toni Ferrara, founder and CEO of Ferrara Media, believes brands “absolutely” have a responsibility to vet creative through a modern lens—especially when playing on retro aesthetics or slogans that may carry different connotations today—she noted that not every nod to the past is a “dog whistle for eugenics.”
“For AE [and Sweeney], the ‘great genes/jeans’ wordplay is a well-worn advertising pun, not propaganda. It’s cheeky, not sinister,” Ferrara told SJ Denim. “Other denim brands, like Gap in the early 2000s, used similar slogans like ‘Good Genes Run in the Family,’ and no one cried fascism then.”
American Eagle did not respond to SJ Denim’s request for comment.
