Egypt: Kenneth Cole's failtweet comes to life in street prank

A real-world prank making fun of Kenneth Cole's ill-timed and tone-deaf tweet.

Coilhouse has the story, and here are photos. Adobe Illustrator, a little font knowledge, a vinyl cutter, and bitter, bitter sarcasm.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: fashion • Funny • pop culture

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

urbanhick

i dunno…sometimes i think revenge is best served steaming hot n’ thick. mmm….
boo

Seems fitting that there should be cutting humour about this.
penguinchris

Awesome, but an awful lot of work for something that surely will be removed as soon as any of the employees see it! I suppose passing the photos around the internet makes an impact too, but it won’t reach the people who didn’t already see anything about it yesterday, which seems like the point of doing it on the store (so people who might have gone in and bought something would see it).
- Robert
  
  Those of us who have used vinyl cutters know that it will also be a lot of work for the employees to remove it. Every single letter and dot is a separate sticky.
Xenu

This is terrible news for people who like sweatshop made clothing but hate mildly offensive jokes.
AdrenalineSleep

I think it’s rather well done. I like all the comments on Flickr though saying that it’s fake because there’s no way that the store would have put this up on their own window. As though it were completely 100% impossible for anyone to do this if they didn’t work for KC.
- Anonymous
  
  And just why couldn’t a non-employee do it? It could be put on the outside, no problem…
@JmanSays

I wonder if he knows of a good catalog printer for me.

THE KENNETH COLE / EGYPT CATALOG
http://jmansays.tumblr.com/post/3096487235/the-kenneth-cole-egypt-catalog
Emo Pinata

This is absolutely amazing. I hope the store did not sanction this, and someone just decided a well-made prank on a storefront was appropriate.
El Chairman

There’s now an hilariously inappropriate fake Twitter account @KennethColePR.
Shart Tsung

Kenneth Cole makes trash. Actually I think I’d rather wear a garbage bag over my torso and two more bags as shoes than be caught dead in their lame brand. The least they can do now is make a large donation to the first fund to rebuild Egypt. Until then I will continue to spit on their name.

Makes sense that they posted it from a BB; BBs suck too!

#BOYCOTT
MrJM

I was thinking: If you printed out that tweet… and then wrapped it around a brick…
dole

Anon @ #17: The difference is: you expect humor and low-brow from a comedian. You expect class from most fashion houses first.

I guess he posted an apology on Facebook. *shrugs*
Anonymous

It is not tone deaf; fashion statement is still statement, and for once Kenneth Cole seems unassuming, for not hiring Po Bronson, Avital Ronel, and Mark Leyner to write an inclusive policy blog with region-appropriate Report This and tag markup. Your move, jaunty-tags. Will not stiff upper lips save us time and wounds, ungruntlable people?

Many thanks to those suggesting new (perilocal) authors and compliance wonks, Persian (well, not last), Arab, Hasidim et al.

http://www.twitter.com/KenCokePR is confirmed funny.
SamSam

The flickr thread has links to several other photos of this pasted on billboards and walls. Looks like this prankster hasn’t limited himself to one quickly-removable window.
Anonymous

jeebus, is the whole world this uptight or just BBers?

i hate KC’s clothes, but i thought the tweet was pretty funny. i mean if conan tweeted the same joke… “people in cairo just found out about my new show” i think most of you would have laughed.

stop taking life so seriously, people.
phisrow

Stenciled sandblasting or hydrofluoric acid gives a similar frosted effect and is substantially more durable…
Gloster

You know what the really sad thing is?

This will ultimately boost their PR profile and sales.
Anonymous

I caught a store employee scraping it off the window. Conscientiously, she left the vinyl letters all over the sidewalk: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlytle/5416351757/.