Katy Perry's blackface shoes pulled from sale

Fashion designers often make Derek Zoolander look like Albert Einstein, but in picking 2019 to be the year of smirking references to racist imagery, they really outdid themselves. The latest celebrity endorser to be humiliated by something under their name? Katy Perry's blackface shoes.

Katy says she is "saddened" that her design - blue eyes and red lips on black leather - was compared with "painful images" of blackface by critics online.

The shoes have reportedly also been taken off shelves at US retailers.

Katy says the shoes, The Rue and The Ora, were "envisioned as a nod to modern art and surrealism"

Note that it isn't an apology, as some reported. It's not even an "apologize if you felt that way" nonapology. Perry is instead "saddened" and "our intention was never to inflict any pain."

It truly is the year of stupid in the fashion biz:

Ignorance is Never A fashion statement! Apology NOT accepted#blackface #Gucci #gucciblackface #prada #moncler #katyPerry pic.twitter.com/KDCnkzGlgA

- Kieren Boyce (@ThatGyrlKieren) February 10, 2019