A pair of British university students made headlines after a nightclub awarded them best costumes of the night, the girls dressed as the "blazing Twin Towers" on 9/11, complete with burning model airplanes, smoke, fire, smoldering American flags on their heads and even tiny model people falling to their deaths, the Telegraph reports.
Amber Langford and Annie Collinge, both 19, took home £150 ($240) after popular Chelsea nightclub Rosies attendees voted them "best dressed," one wearing a "North Tower" get-up and the other a "South Tower."
After their photo made the front page of UK newspaper The Sun along with the caption "Towering Stupidity," the club was forced to shut down all of their social media properties as their parent company, Stonegate, conducts a "full investigation."
"We are extremely concerned that an award of vouchers was made to two young women who were dressed in a distasteful and offensive manner," a company spokesperson told the Telegraph. "There was a serious error of judgement made on the evening by a contracted DJ to award such a prize and we apologize to anybody who may have been upset or offended by this."
Many people vented their anger and shock on the company's Facebook page at not only the costumes, but for the club to reward the girls for wearing them.
"Rosies approve of the 9/11 killings, and gave someone £150 pounds for mocking the victims," George Borsberry, 20, a mechanical engineer who was present that night, wrote on the nightclub's Facebook page. "Not only were they labelled the 'best dressed', but they were also given £150 to dress up in this way and mock the victims and the families of the victims. We asked to see the manager to complain and were turned down due to him being 'too busy' to see us. After waiting two and a half hours to see the person who decided this dreadful winner all we got was 'sorry but it was a good costume'. He then had the audacity to say there were people in other disgusting costumes such as Jimmy Savile, as if to justify that it was alright to dress like that."
The University of Chester, the school that Langford and Collinge both attend, along with the Chester Students' Union said in a statement: "We utterly condemn the appalling photos. Both organizations have begun and urgent investigation with a view to taking the necessary action."
"We never meant to be offensive, but we apologize if any offence was caused," Langford and Collinge said in response, according to the Telegraph. "The idea was to depict a modern-day horror that happened in our lifetime and was not intended as a joke."
Meanwhile, Langford's father, Martin Langford, is a retired pilot, and was ironically flying jets in the U.S. during the September 11 attacks.
"I didn't know anything about it, but I'm not happy about it," he told the newspaper. "She knows I'm a pilot and that's not cool at all. We will be having a little chat, I think."
Click here to see the photo of Amber Langford and Annie Collinge wearing World Trade Center costumes at a nightclub in Chester that landed them on the front page of The Sun.
@RosiesProblems pic.twitter.com/USHe0sTRB6
— Sam (@SamBoyle) November 6, 2013
