First she was brat, now she’s a Midwest princess.
After picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris dropped a new pean to the TikTok generation with a trendy Harris-Walz camouflage hat.
The $40 hats — a nod to Walz’s homespun image as a simple Midwest dad — sold out from the campaign’s merch store within 30 minutes.
The campaign told TeenVogue that it did nearly $1 million in sales for the caps in a matter of hours as tens of thousands of people placed back orders for the cap.
The design, though, is far from homespun. It appears to be a direct ripoff from a camo hat marketed by pop star Chappell Roan.
The Missouri native, who is selling her own “Midwest princess” hat for a more modest $30, did not seem to be in on the marketing stunt.
“is this real,” the “HOT TO GO!” singer asked on X, retweeting a side-by-side picture of the two hats.
This is a bit of a reversal from the Harris campaign’s last pop music crossover.
After President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and cleared the way for Harris to run, Charli XCX branded the vice president “brat” — a nod to her newly released album and a reference to new album.
(For the uninitiated, Charli XCX explains “brat” like this: “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things some times. Who feels like herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”)
Some fans were not impressed by the Harris-Walz campaign’s new stunt.
“not the US government coming for your brand !!?!!??? your impact omg,” one fan responded to Roan’s tweet.
Others flooded the comments calling for Roan to endorse Harris.
“Between you and Taylor Swift, this election is going to be so lit,” one fan posted.
The only thing that’s clear is that only a lucky few are going to get to live out their Midwest Princess-Harris-Walz summer mashup.
Anyone who didn’t manage to snag one of the 3,000 hats in the original run and decided to preorder the next round will have to wait until mid-October, just a few weeks before the election, to get theirs.
