In the summer of 2025, the infamous Sydney Sweeney returned to the billboards, for yet another controversial advertisement. The campaign quickly prompted backlash, as people flooded social media with criticism - seeking reassurance that they were not just pulling at loose strings. When American Eagle dropped its latest denim campaign, featuring the harmful double entendre of ‘jeans’ and ‘genes’, the complaints were instantaneous, even if the “bad” vibes could not quite be placed from the start. The imagery and editorial direction of the American Eagle ad felt less like “all-American comfort”, but rather seemed like an ad whose script referenced a eugenics textbook. At the center of the fury were the connotations of the campaign and who they cast to represent them. It was coded in ways that suggested selective beauty, reminiscent of colonial preferences. What struck a chord for some was the fact that a white, American, blonde, conventionally attractive woman was talking to people about her genes. Some argued that critics of the ad were looking too much into it. However, that debate quickly collapsed when one considered the intentional efforts behind advertisement. None of it is ever accidental. The fashion ecosystem in the U.S. has always had a history of perpetrating elitist ideals under the guise of style, or the excuse of couture. Given the widespread influence of these spaces, an undeniable amount of crosschecking has to happen in the process; multiple eyes have to approve the ad and make sure it aligns with the campaign’s goals. Brands have done this before - think Calvin Klein’s heroin chic branding in the ’90s, or Abercrombie’s exclusionary history of the “cool kid” branding. None of these cultural movements in the fashion world are simply innocent slips of taste. They are intentional decisions about who gets to embody the “desirable”, often speaking more on who gets erased in the process. When a company leans on a figure like Sweeney to wear and flaunt their denim, they are not just selling pants - they are selling an entire hierarchy of beauty, class, and even race. Fashion has always shown signs of being a multi-billion-dollar industry that functions in coded messages, and knows exactly what it is putting on the billboard. Case in point, Sweeney’s American Eagle ad trafficked a sanitized, almost purist vision of American identity. Unsurprisingly, this aesthetic alone stumbled into propaganda, and quickly feigned innocence when met with backlash and confronted with the implications of the entendre. It makes sense that people resist assuming the branding was accidental, and question whether the harm done was intentional or not. The reality was that it reminded everyone how easily the “all-American” persona could quickly collapse into exclusionary practices of who counts as American, and what that should look like. In the end, whatever initial narrative the brand thought it was portraying did not matter. Intention alone did not dictate the meaning that people pulled from the short clips; reception of the ad played a crucial part. After all, that is the entire point of advertising, and when the reception of it is this divided, then the blame lies with the ad, not the audience. All American Eagle did was give a face that people could direct their criticism towards. This is where Sweeney’s star power further complicates things. There has always been considerable weight on whose face gets to represent the brand’s ideals, since it mainly speaks directly to what the brand itself is trying to monetize as a desirable ‘look’ to consume, replicate, and embrace. Sweeney has already built a career playing women who were at once vulnerable and, often, victims to a system that was not tailored to fit them, as seen in her portrayal of Cassie in Euphoria and Sister Cecilia in Immaculate. Her track record has, therefore, made her synonymous with characters who were painfully human and flawed, yet even then, for American Eagle she was the perfect ambassador for a denim brand trying to sell a fantasy. Why? Because off-screen, her image is crafted out of embracing a certain sensuality, tame enough to flirt with the idea, but tiptoeing around full-blown eroticism. Sweeney was not just a model in this campaign; she was a symbol, and the dissonance between her onscreen performances versus her real life branding confused people on what kind of story Sweeney is trying to contribute to. Meanwhile, over at Gap, a very different denim story unfolded. Partnering with KATSEYE, the global girl group that has been cementing their pop status this past year, the brand launched a campaign that was expressive, diverse, and teasingly playful. The jeans were not sold through the misplaced nostalgia for a caricaturised past, but through a messy, colorful present. The ad embraced a cast filled with people of all different visual languages, front and center. Where American Eagle’s ad looked stuck in the sepia tones of white heritage branding, Gap revitalized the main essence of true inclusive fashion: it should not be about the face, but the fit! KATSEYE has already been very clear on their emphasis on cultural pride and act as a representation of minority groups that young girls can feel reflected in. Now, they can finally see themselves as more than just an afterthought. Instead they are the central image that brands are willing to endorse. The Gap ad acted as a sign to remind people that advertising campaigns should not feel ostracising. The effect of the campaign was immediate, as it generated excitement rather than immediate suspicion, and instead of sparking debates about the possible coded messages, it was hailed as the cheeky rebuttal to American Eagle’s ad, saying that everyone can look “Better in Denim”. The ad reminded people that denim does not have to be loaded with ideology; it can actually be a fun, casual outlet of expression that adapts to whoever wears it. People now, especially Gen Z, are no longer quietly accepting a brand’s aesthetic. They interrogate it, parody it, and reject it if there is even a hint of the commodified old hierarchies used for the sake of virality. Denim has always been the fabric of the people, and for companies to sell it, there needs to be accountability in how beauty and belonging gets framed. For once, the future of jeans actually looks better when we stop pretending that one size fits all.