Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Mike Redmond | News | August 12, 2025
From a purely marketing perspective, the Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad was a success. Controversy works! It immediately dominated headlines, and whether or not the initial backlash over eugenics was organic or indicative of “liberals run amok,” it no longer mattered. This thing went all the way to the White House where it was super-charged thanks to reports that Sweeney registered as a Republican during the 2024 election.
The Euphoria star became a cause célèbre for the worst people alive. Both The Bathroom Bandit and 30-Year-Old Grandma shoved their featureless white girl haunches on to social media to satiate their constant need for attention and still simmering delusions that they could have been a model. And I know, I know. As a man, I should never comment on women’s bodies, but folks, we all have eyes! I’m just telling you what I’m seeing.
Anyway, we’re now three weeks out from this debacle, and the numbers are starting to come in for American Eagle. They’re not great. Via Retail Brew:
Foot traffic fell 9% year over year at American Eagle stores for the week that began August 3, marking the second week of traffic declines since the retailer launched its controversial campaign featuring actor Sydney Sweeney, according to data from Pass_by provided exclusively to Retail Brew.
OK, everything is more expensive thanks to the moron randomly mashing tariff buttons like a Fisher Price cash register, so maybe this is an industry wide trend. Not so much.
The latest week (from August 3 through August 9) saw foot-traffic declines among some of the retailer’s direct competitors for younger clothing shoppers, too, though not as steep as American Eagle’s 9% YoY drop. Abercrombie & Fitch experienced lower foot traffic (-3.3%), along with H&M (-4.9%), Gap (-2.8%), and Urban Outfitters (-2.7%), per Pass_by.
I’m no business guru, and the state of my career can fully attest to that. That said, I do know that the line should go up after a major ad campaign, not down. You generally want things to improve, but people aren’t even walking inside of an American Eagle, so you can’t say it’s the prices. They didn’t even have a chance to see them.
Even worse for American Eagle, back to school shopping is in full swing, so this should have been fish in a barrel. How do you mess that up? Turns out not even a hot blonde can paper over playing footsies with eugenics in the most politically charged environment since 9/11. Who knew?
