The controversy swirling around American Eagle Outfitters‘ “Great Jeans” campaign with Sydney Sweeney does not appear to be subsiding.
For more than 10 days, the ads featuring “The White Lotus” actress have been garnering news story and social media backlash. U.S. President Donald Trump stoked the situation over the weekend, and David Lipman, a veteran creative director in advertising, suggested Monday that the American Eagle campaign knocked off one that he did with Georgia May Jagger for Hudson Jeans in 2009.
After learning from a reporter about Sweeney’s voter status, Trump weighed in on Truth Social with “#SydneySweeney, a registered Republican, has the HOTTEST ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying of the shelves.’ Go get ‘em Sydney.”
A media request to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics asking whether Trump’s post was in accordance with its rule on “Endorsing Organizations, Products or Persons” was not immediately acknowledged Monday.
American Eagle’s stock increased by 23.5 percent, closing at $13.28 Monday. That was a considerable gain compared to Friday, when it closed down by less than 1 percent.
Susan Scafidi, founder and director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University, said, “Assuming that the Sydney B. Sweeney, [who is] registered as a Republican in Florida is indeed the same person, party operatives are probably already imagining a red, white and blue ‘genes’ campaign ad.“
Noting how “American politics are so divided that most brands would benefit from steering clear of blatant political partisanship,” University of Illinois Chicago professor Adam Duhachek speculated that American Eagle did not set out to make a political ad, since much of the response would seem very hard to anticipate. He said, “From a pure engagement standpoint, the campaign has been wildly successful, drawing millions of views and their stock is up more than 20 percent today. Very few campaigns in recent memory have produced that level of lift. The long-term impact is more difficult to assess.”
Representatives at American Eagle and at its outside public relations firm Shadow did not respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon about Trump’s claim that the jeans were “flying off the shelves.” They also did not respond about an inquiry suggesting the Sweeney campaign knocks off the 2009 Hudson Jeans one.
In that one, the then-teenage Jagger wears only a lace bra and underwear, as she lies back slithering on a pair of tight jeans. It closes with her saying, “My mom is Jerry Hall. My dad is Mick Jagger. Some people say I have great genes.” Lipman, the ad’s creator, flagged the similarities to WWD on Monday.
Lipman said the 30-second Hudson Jeans clip was only accessible for one week, but it was said to have racked up more than 40 million views. While Lipman said he has heard from multiple people including coworkers from that time, who suggested American Eagle “plagiarized” his work and who have encouraged him to hire a lawyer, he held off on speaking with the media until Monday, namely because he is on vacation.
Georgia May Jagger in the 2009 Hudson Jean campaign.
Mario Sorrenti
Recalling how much of the fanfare about the Hudson Jeans creative was about Jagger being topless and for her being Mick Jagger’s daughter, Lipman said that “noise also turned the brand on, but not so much over the controversy.” He said, “The brand tripled in revenue from the campaign.”
In 2013, Fireman Capital Partners, the investment firm started by Reebok’s founder Paul Fireman, sold Hudson Clothing for $97.6 million to Joe’s Jeans, which was more than triple its initial $30 million investment in 2009. Joe’s Jeans is now owned by WHP Global.
The photographer Mario Sorrenti shot Jagger for the campaign. He could not be reached for comment Monday, nor could Jagger.
“Peter Kim, (who founded Hudson Jeans in 2002), was the CEO at the time. Of course, nobody remembers it better than me because I masterminded it and wrote the line, ‘My mom is Jerry Hall. My dad is Mick Jagger. Some people say I have great genes,’” Lipman said.
Kim, who is now founder and chief executive officer of the Golden Circle Group, said Monday, “My initial thought was ‘it looked like they ripped us off from back in the day.’” He said he heard a lot about the similarities over the weekend.
Suggesting that the new Sweeney campaign is the essence of what he did with Hudson Jeans, Lipton said he plans to speak with his attorneys when he returns from vacation. “I’m very, very upset by it, needless to say,” he said.
Lipman said after seeing a video of Sweeney in the window of the American Eagle store in downtown Manhattan, he sent it to his assistant of many years and asked, “Does this remind you of anything?” Lipman claimed that he immediately suggested that America Eagle had “ripped off” the Hudson Jeans campaign with Jagger. “I don’t know if there’s an ex-employee that works at American Eagle [now.] It’s not easy to find this video on the internet. We did that on purpose to be cool. The whole idea was to create this demand and then to take it all away,” Lipman said. ”We don’t do that anymore [in advertising,] unfortunately.”
Lipman said he remembered watching the number of views of the clip tick up on YouTube, despite the fact that the media buy did not include $1 that was spent on digital media. “Yes, we ran an ad in Vogue and had billboards and stuff. But we didn’t spend any money on digital and it went viral,” Lipman said.
The Hudson Jeans “genes” reference was “in better taste — for sure” compared to Sweeney’s “great jean” tag line for American Eagle, according to Lipman. He said, “Ours was about genetics, as in Mom and Dad, and where I come from. I will say that American Eagle’s response [to the controversy] was justified and they were proper to the public. I don’t think it’s such a big deal, as to what the other side of the conversation is saying.”
Allowing that the Sweeney commercial is “very effective,” Lipman said, “It’s derivative of what I did. It’s not original. I think the world should know it.”
Referring to the initial controversy, Drexel University professor Joseph Hancock said good or bad publicity is about creating ties to sell more goods. He said, “Have we all forgotten Abercrombie & Fitch’s ideology of making ‘whiteness’ and hot bodies a part of the jeans market? It’s history. Sex sells. When it comes to jeans, companies create controversy because jeans are so basic. It’s necessary to contextualize the product to compete in the global market place.”
To that point, Hudson Jeans’ 2009 campaign with the baby-faced adolescent Jagger was compared by some to Calvin Klein’s controversial campaign with Brooke Shields in 1981.
Scafidi said AEO’s “rather slow response strategically kept its name in the news, and then threaded the needle between progressive outrage and right-wing defense of the model and mockery of the left.” She said, “By refocusing on the product — the jeans — and implicitly claiming that its reuse of an old pun is unworthy of widespread cultural analysis rather than either apologizing for or defending its ad, AE chose to appeal to the many, who are tired of extreme partisan politics.“
