Netflix Documentary Shows Abercrombie’s Worrying Rise

the website of Abercrombie & Fitch is, today, filled with Gen Z’s friendly nods to diversity and inclusion. There are people of color, sizes XL, and even a themed collection with “gender-inclusive” rainbow t-shirts.

The brand’s Instagram account, meanwhile, proudly promotes wheelchair models, body positivity stories and statements of LGBTQ solidarity.

However, behind the brand’s new slogan, “This is #AbercrombieToday,” is a past that many would rather forget.

Any chance of that was effectively thwarted by the new Netflix documentary, “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch “, which showcases Abercrombie’s transformation from forgotten 19th century retailer to the epitome of late 1990s teen fashion.

Through interviews with former models, recruiters, store employees, and executives, the 88-minute film suggests that looking cool, attractive, and white wasn’t just a branding exercise: it was an active corporate strategy that came at the expense of non-branding. whites, employees and consumers.

Despite all the current messages of inclusivity, millennials (and older) will remember a completely different Abercrombie – one that conquered malls and billboards with an army of attractive models with ripped male bodies.

One that spread across college campuses and was mentioned in the LFO’s 1999 anthem “Summer Girls” (“I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch,” sang the band’s late lead singer, Rich Cronin).

As senior Washington Post critic Robin Givhan reflects in the documentary, Abercrombie’s explosive success was achieved by combining Calvin Klein’s sex appeal and Ralph Lauren’s elite elegance — but at more affordable prices than both.

At the time, it looked like the brand could do little harm. A former trader recalls that a colleague said they “could write ‘Abercrombie & Fitch’ with dog shit and put it in a baseball cap and sell it for 40 bucks.”

One of the brand’s former models put it even more succinctly: “If you weren’t wearing Abercrombie, you weren’t cool.”

But behind the aura of exclusivity was a policy of, well, exclusivity. In a forerunner of today’s influencer marketing, the brand hunted down good-looking employees and sought out fraternities and college sororities for models and store clerks — a strategy just for hipsters underpinned by a tacit understanding of whose looks qualified as “utterly attractive.” ” American.

The company declined to comment on specific allegations made in the documentary, although current CEO Fran Horowitz told CNN in a statement, “We recognize and validate that there were exclusionary and inappropriate actions under previous leadership,” adding that the company is now “a place of belonging”.

“We evolved the organization, including changes in management, prioritizing representation, implementing new policies, rethinking our experiences and updating the fit, size and style of our products,” she said.

“Are we exclusionary? Absolutely”

The company began facing allegations of wrongdoing around the turn of the millennium. In 2003, a group of former employees and job seekers sued Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination.

Several of the plaintiffs appear in the Netflix documentary to reiterate longstanding allegations that black, Asian-American and Hispanic employees have had their hours reduced, been fired or were forced into backstage roles because of their appearance.

Abercrombie settled the lawsuit in 2004, paying about $40 million to its accusers. And while the company never admitted guilt in the case, it did agree to a non-binding Consent Act that saw a court oversee improvements in its hiring, recruiting and marketing practices.

While there were obvious improvements in the diversity seen at Abercrombie stores, the company would later end up in the Supreme Court after an American Muslim, Samantha Elauf, claimed she was turned down for a job in 2008 because she wore a headscarf. The court ruled 8-1 in her favor.

The documentary also revisits other troubling parts of Abercrombie’s success story, including her close relationship with fashion photographer Bruce Weber, who has since been accused of sexual misconduct by several models. (Weber has consistently denied the allegations, telling the New York Times in 2017 that he “never touched anyone inappropriately.”)

Other now unthinkable moments include offensive T-shirts that used stereotypical Asian fonts and caricatures, including one featuring the fictional Wong Brothers Laundry Service and its slogan “Two Wongs Can Make You White.”

What’s shocking about the documentary, however, is not just the nature of the accusations – many of which are already in the public domain – but how long it took for this reckoning to arrive.

Abercrombie has made little secret of wanting its clothes to be worn by people with a certain appearance. In 2006, former CEO Mike Jeffries explained his tactics in a now-infamous profile on the Salon news site, saying, “We go after the attractive American boy with a great attitude and lots of friends. Many people do not belong (in our clothes), and they cannot belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

The comments went almost unnoticed at the time. The Jeffries citation — and the brand’s troubled marketing and advertising history — would become yet another corporate responsibility over the next decade. But then, when a young, socially aware generation of customers began to take notice, the floodgates opened.

In 2013, teenage eating disorder survivor Benjamin O’Keefe started a petition on change.org signed by nearly 80,000 people, which urged the brand to offer sizes XL and above.

That same year, filmmaker Greg Karber went viral with his #FitchTheHomeless campaign and video, which showed him donating Abercrombie clothing to homeless people in a response to Jeffries’ exclusionary approach.

Plus-size blogger Jes Baker created a series of inclusive fake ads that changed the brand’s logo to “Cute and Fat”.

The following year, Jeffries stepped down as CEO amid declining sales, paving the way for another rebranding exercise. But like several other documentaries that revisit troubling elements of our not-too-distant past, “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch” is less an exposition of what happened under his leadership and more a reflection on what we, as a society, we allow it to happen.

As the Asian-American students who protested the “Wong Brothers” T-shirts in 2002 can attest, objections to the brand’s behavior have always existed – but only now has someone finally stopped to listen.

“There were probably as many people as there are now who hated what we were doing, who were completely offended, who didn’t feel included, who didn’t feel represented,” reflects a former employee near the end of the documentary.

“But they didn’t have the platform to be able to express it and now they do.”