Converse Pulls Karina Chuck 70 X Ad, Says 'We Got This Wrong'

Converse has apologized for an advertising image from its Chuck 70 X campaign with the singer Karina, after social-media users said the picture's lighting and shadows evoked Ku Klux Klan and lynching imagery. "We're sorry," a Converse spokesperson said in a statement. "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."

The image showed the lower half of a person dressed in white, holding a pair of Converse shoes at their side. Adweek editor in chief Ryan Joe described the composition in more detail: Karina, a member of the K-pop group aespa, stands in a spotlight shaped like Converse's five-pointed star, with one point of the star falling as a bright white triangle across Karina's skirt. Some viewers read that triangle as a Klansman's pointed hood, while the shadow obscured the arm holding the second pair of shoes, leaving them appearing to dangle beside it.

Footwear News, part of Women's Wear Daily, first reported the apology. The fact-checking site Snopes published its own examination on September 18, rating as true the claim that Converse had run the advertisement, and said a Converse spokesperson sent it the same statement by email. Most of the discussion took place on Threads, where the image was posted on September 3, though it also circulated on Reddit, X, Facebook and Instagram.

Converse is owned by Nike, and the campaign fronts one of K-pop's most visible performers. A single set-design decision moved from a Threads post to a corporate apology in roughly two weeks — a case study in how fast a composition that cleared internal review can be re-read by a global audience.

Several questions remain open. Snopes said Converse did not immediately respond to its inquiries about the campaign's design and approval process, or about whether the company intended to pull the advertisement outright. The removal also appears incomplete: Snopes reported that, as of its publication, a direct link to Converse's official Threads account still displayed the September 3 post, even though the post no longer appeared on the account's main page — suggesting it had been archived rather than deleted. A Wayback Machine capture from August 22 showed the image on Converse's U.S. page for the collaboration; that page has since been replaced with a clip of Karina modeling the shoes.

A second Converse advertisement, showing a person on a ladder holding shoes overhead, drew similar comparisons from some users. Adweek identified it as part of a Converse collaboration with the menswear label Palmes, released on September 14. Snopes confirmed it is a genuine Converse advertisement and found it still live on Converse Chile's account. Claims that the campaign was produced by a team in Malaysia could not be verified: Snopes found the image was not on Converse Malaysia's Instagram account, and a site search there for "Chuck 70 X" returned an error.