Converse shoes drew backlash this week after a campaign image tied to Karina of Aespa was compared online with Ku Klux Klan hoods and lynching imagery. Converse apologized, said the image was removed from its channels, and said it was working to remove it everywhere it appeared.
The brand wrote, “We’re sorry. We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened, and we will do better.” As of writing, the image still remained on the brand’s Threads account.
Karina and the Converse campaign
Karina starred as the face of the campaign for the Chuck 70 X and Run Star Crush sneakers. In the disputed photo, she stood inside a Converse star, wore a white skirt, and held two shoes on her left side.
Social media users said the lighting on the skirt created a white triangle shape that resembled a KKK hood. They also said the shoes looked like two dangling legs, which deepened the comparison. The criticism centered on the image itself, not on the campaign’s product line.
Threads and Converse Malaysia
A second image from a different campaign was shared to the Converse Malaysia Instagram account from the Converse x Palmes campaign for the Jack Purcell PDM sneaker collection released earlier this month. In that image, a man climbed a ladder while holding a pair of shoes dangling above him and hanging from a tree, while another man looked up.
On Thursday, user akwasichr1s wrote on Threads about the second image. Converse said it was removing the image from its channels, but the Threads post remained visible as of writing.
Ayanna Pressley and hanging concerns
The dispute landed in a week when the meaning of hanging imagery was already under scrutiny. On Sept. 10, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and 59 colleagues called on the DOJ and FBI to investigate a series of incidents involving Black people found hanging across the country, and the facts provided here say there have been 10 reported hangings in 2026.
Converse has worked with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Kelly Oubre Jr., Tyler, The Creator, Dwyane Wade, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. That history made the backlash harder to dismiss as a one-off design complaint, because the company’s response now has to cover both the image that drew criticism and whether it finishes removing the material everywhere it appears.
For readers who saw the post before it was pulled, the practical question is simple: the company has already acknowledged the error and started taking the image down, but the Threads account showed it had not vanished from every place at the same time.
