There are a lot of teachers mad at Reese Witherspoon right now.
The actress did a dress giveaway from her clothing line, Draper James, but due to a lot of mistakes, things soon went awry…
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Right now, the world is scrambling for protective gear, such as face masks, gowns, and gloves to protect themselves from the virus that is sweeping over all of us.
So far, the virus has infected more than 2.1 million people and killed at least 147,000 worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University .
Thankfully, several companies in the fashion industry have answered the call by shifting their production to start creative medical-grade protective gear.
Luxury brand, Louis Vuitton, for example, recently announced their new strategy: they’re starting to sew medical-grade face masks and gowns for hospitals and first responders.
“Louis Vuitton wishes to thank the hundreds of artisans who have volunteered at Louis Vuitton’s ateliers across France,” the company wrote on Instagram.
“Because of their commitment, hundreds of thousands of non-surgical masks are being produced and donated to healthcare workers on the frontline.”
So many other companies have also followed suit, including Nordstrom, Dior, and Chanel.
With so many fashion labels doing what they can to help out during the coronavirus, one label’s messy mistake stood out like a sore thumb…
That fashion label, called Draper James, just so happens to belong to actress Reese Witherspoon.
The company creates pieces that are “classic American style, steeped in Southern charm, feminine and pretty,” according to the site .
Here’s what happened:
When the pandemic hit, the clothing line offered a dress giveaway on Instagram as a way to say thank you to teachers.
“We want to say thank you,” the giveaway post on Instagram read.
“During quarantine, we see you working harder than ever to educate our children. To show our gratitude, Draper James would like to give teachers a free dress.”
For teachers to qualify to win a dress (while supplies lasted) all they had to do was fill out a form and then they’d be notified by email if they won.
The intent was good, but things soon went awry.
That’s because the company only had 250 dresses to give away…
To give you some numbers on just how messy this is, consider this: there are more than three million school teachers in the United states (mainly women) and more than one million teachers entered the giveaway.
A lot of this had to do with The Today Show and Good Morning America promoting it.
To make things worse, the ones that didn’t win were subscribed to the Draper James mailing list.
This is like when Apple uploaded U2’s album to all iPhones across the globe… WE DIDN’T WANT IT.
Since so many teachers signed up, the company did do some damage control before true disappointment set in.
They did so by contacting the teachers and reminding them that it was a raffle.
They also specified the number of dresses that they had on social media several times.
Still, the damage was done and there were a *lot* of angry tweets on Twitter to show for it.
“Classic bait and switch @draperjames. Great way to capitalize on a pandemic,” another added.
The price of Reese’s dresses were called into question.
“I said the same thing! Even with the 30% off what public school teacher can afford it? Rolling on the floor laughing,” another added.
Teachers were also pretty upset about their emails being saved by the company.
Thankfully, the clothing line didn’t ask for teachers to also provide their ID on the form as well.
Since the backlash started, Reese’s company has been trying to make things right.
“We felt like we moved too quickly and didn’t anticipate the volume of the response,” said Marissa Cooley, the senior vice president for brand marketing and creative at Draper James.
“We were really overwhelmed. It was way more volume than the company had ever seen. We expected the single-digit thousands.”
This past weekend, the company sent another email to applicants, letting them know that they were making a donation on behalf of teachers.
While they didn’t specify how much the donation is, they did say that it’s a charity that gives teachers supplies to send to their remote-learning students.
In the end, though, teachers still aren’t impressed…
What do you think of the controversy? Let us know in the comments!
