Paris-based high end fashion label Balenciaga faced backlash after they released a $1,190 (£860) pair of sweatpants. According to critics, the sweatpants rips off black culture, reports BBC.

The pants feature a built-in pair of boxer shorts peeking out from the waistband, mimicking a style popularised by hip hop musicians.

A TikTok influencer called the pants racist and the post was viewed 1.6 million times. According to the BBC report, black culture experts have also raised concerns about the pants.

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Meanwhile, Balenciaga said it often combined wardrobe pieces into a single garment. Chief marketing officer Ludivine Pont said they have earlier sold “jeans layered over tracksuit pants [and] button-up shirts layered over t-shirts”, adding the the Trompe L’Oeil trousers were part of their combined wardrobe pieces.

In 1990s and 2000s, wearing low slung pants was a raging trend, but during the 2000s, some US states passed laws banning the practice.

Some states such as Shreveport, Louisiana, have turned repelled the law, stating local law enforcement are not “fashion police”. Saggy pants were used as a pretext to target, search, and imprison black people, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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TikTok user Mr200m posted a video of the sweatpants on sale in London and in the video someone is heard saying: “This feels very racist… They have woven the boxers inside the trousers.”

Social media is divided over the sweatpants with some saying that the pants amounted to double standards, while others said the design was not racist.

One of the users wrote that boxers sown into pants was “a really common thing in the 90s”.

Meanwhile, Marquita Gammage, an associate professor of Africana Studies at California State University, told CNN the pants had “cultural appropriation written all over them.”