Urban Outfitters's faux-Navajo no-no: latest wardrobe malfunction
By naming their items after the Native American tribe (i.e., the Peace Treaty Feather Necklace or the Staring at Stars Skull Native Headdress T-shirt), the company may have to pay a hefty fine for violating trademark law . The Navajo Nation owns 12 trademarks on the use of the word “Navajo,” and according to the Department of the Interior, it’s illegal to sell items in a manner that falsely suggest they are produced by Native Americans.
Pending litigation aside, this isn’t the first time that Urban Outfitters has found itself on the wrong side of public opinion for an item sold in its stores — nor is it the first company to offend a portion of the population by pushing the boundaries for questionable merchandising decisions over the last 10 years:
April 2002: Abercrombie & Fitch offends with Asian T-shirt that bears the slogan “Wong brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Make it White.” The T-shirts featured Asian men with caricatured faces, slanted eyes and rice-paddy hats. The company was surprised by the controversy — “We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt,” said Hampton Carney, with Paul Wilmot Communications in New York, the public relations firm where Abercrombie referred a reporter’s call.
Virginia is for... volcanoes?
Virginia is known for many things, from its beaches to its mountains, its farms and universities.
But volcanoes?
True enough, Virginia has a quirky if still unexplained history with volcanic activity, one of the few East Coast states that can make that claim.
While many small fractures and cracks remain as evidence that lava once flowed freely millions of years ago, two ancient and prominent examples still can be seen today: Trimble Knob, in Highland County near the West Virginia line, and Mole Hill, near Harrisonburg.
They could not look any more different. Trimble Knob is small, stubby and nearly treeless; Mole Hill is taller, sprawling and covered by thick bramble and forest.
Mennonite farms, including horse-drawn carriages on country roads, lie at the foot of Mole Hill. Sheep graze atop Trimble Knob.
Both land features are what geologists call plugs, the slowly eroding remnants of extinct volcanoes. Here, black basalt rocks indicating their fiery origins can be found amid a sea of green sedimentary stones that otherwise dominate the Shenandoah Valley landscape.
Spencer Hall goes to West Virginia where old men are angry, the middle-aged women love Dana Holgorsen, and LSU fans stare down demons unimpressed. 5:00 pm The woman at the rental counter in Washington, DC asks: "Where will
"It's the first time we've started to look closely at this site," Johnson said recently in her lab, where she was showing off thin slices of volcanic rock under a microscope while wearing a JMU Geology T-shirt. "I'd love to spend more time working on
FirstData was the title sponsor for this year's Day of Caring with Volvo Powertrain supplying the Live United T-shirts for volunteers. Volunteer Laren Sweetser shovels and scrapes landscaping rocks Wednesday at the Community Free Clinic on Mill.
In North Carolina, T-Shirt Larry taught me to find the best in the things I saw; my son Bart taught me courage; I learned the importance of making drawings that told the truth; and I learned that most people are nice and help you see your soul.