Retail Therapy: Old Navy spaces out on gender equality

It's been another weird week in retail. Old Navy got called out for only stocking NASA T-shirts for men and boys, Crocs hitched the brand's hopes to Drew Barrymore's singing, and Sephora took a queue from Life Size and brought Barbie back to the real world.

This, and more, in this week's retail therapy.

Old Navy sends gender equality into orbit

For a brand whose universal appeal seems to be single-handedly keeping Gap afloat, Old Navy has nevertheless done a great job of isolating customers.

The retailer came under fire this week when a NASA advisor called the company out for marketing all six of its space-themed T-shirts toward men and boys, Inverse reports. In an elegantly-phrased tweet that summarized the problem beautifully, Ariel Waldman posted a photo of the NASA offerings with just eight words: "This is some epic level bullshit, Old Navy."

In fact, in a matchup between two bullshit ideas — Old Navy's lack of forethought and this company's creation of an edible "tanning supplement" — we're not sure which wins out.

Even American Girl's spacesuit-less astronaut doll had more going for it than this line at Old Navy's, which manages to isolate half of the population while also implying that women couldn't possibly be interested in NASA.

Take a good look, folks. This is how you lose customers.

This is some epic level bullshit, @OldNavy. pic.twitter.com/7unVZ6nwQO
— Ariel Waldman (@arielwaldman) March 19, 2018

Nice shirts, @OldNavy. Too bad I missed the memo that space is only for boys and men before I started working for @NASA.
— Egle Cekanaviciute (@mousegle) March 19, 2018

If you're tired of being told to 'come as you are,' say 'Crocs'

Much as we all like wine and cheese, some things just don't get better with age. For example: Cersei Lannister, that piece of cake in the fridge and — the subject of today's roast — Crocs.

Don't tell that to the company, though. According to Marketing Dive, Crocs is still under the firm belief that a musical number featuring Drew Barrymore, a host of extras and way too much foam footwear is all it takes to make an ugly pair of shoes desirable (they pulled a similar stunt last year and no, we're still not willing to "come as we are" to a Crocs storefront — partly because we're not sure where to find one).

Y'all, I don't know of I can live in a world where Drew Barrymore is pimping crocs.
— Lesley Rebecca (@lesleyrebecca) March 22, 2018

My absolute favourite thing right now is @DrewBarrymore trying to make crocs cool again pic.twitter.com/r2yzDWisSP
— Sarah Talty (@Sarah_Talty) March 22, 2018

In fact, we're much more likely to come as we are to H&M's similarly dance-inspired campaign, which features women ditching their male dance partners for other women. Whether it's because women are better dancers or because they're tired of being second-class citizens, we can't really blame them for walking out.

After all: Who wouldn't rather dance with Winona Ryder?

thank you @h&m for blessing us with tension between two queens winona ryder and elizabeth olsen pic.twitter.com/wBmEBibPgC
— сценарист кокибойз (@you_darling) March 19, 2018

I didn't know I needed an intense Winona Ryder x Elizabeth Olsen lesbian dance film thing until now thanks H&M pic.twitter.com/Q3PGqRoNWl
— Clarence + Machine (@clarencemight) March 19, 2018

Sephora's new collection is all dolled up

She was a Barbie girl in a Barbie world — and then she joined Sephora and created a makeup collection.

The Sephora Collection x Barbie kit, reported by the Revelist, takes inspiration from the doll that popularized a plastic, bad body image and — more recently — incited humanity's deep-rooted loathing of the man bun.

But what does that mean for makeup? Mainly, that the featured products come in several alarming shades of pink, but since Barbie means so much more than that, customers also get to walk home with a Barbie baseball cap and a useless amount of packaging in the form of a cardboard boombox.

There are several ways we could describe this collection: pink, tubular (thanks, Like Totally 80s.com) and models-with-vacant-expressions come to mind. But really there's only one adjective that could capture anything Barbie related: fantastic.

We, too, live in the color scheme of a 50s diner

Sephora

Who knew there were so many shades of pink lipstick?

Sephora

Asos casts a spelling error over customers

As forward-thinker Hannah Montana once said: Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days. It just so happens that mistakes matter a lot more when you're a fast-fashion retailer with a large following.

Take Asos, for example. In addition to making it into this column at least once a month, thanks to poorly-designed products, the company has now managed to claim a spot for misspelling "online" … on 17,000 plastic shopping bags.

The mistake, reported by Teen Vogue, has already been masterfully turned into a success — a process that we can't help but think was also employed in the development of the sunglass earrings, the denim skirt and skinny jean combo, and of course the swimsuit that was not actually built for water.

But we digress. Asos' social media team has shrugged this one off by sending out a cheeky tweet declaring the bags "limited edition." Just be thankful they haven't pulled a Balenciaga and started charging $1,000 for them.