Abercrombie & Fitch: Aufstieg und Fall

My first experience at an A n F store was it was shuttered, hardly anyone was shopping, it was dark, and tons of cologne was sprayed on everything. So dark you could barely see the clothes. Such a strange shopping experience. I didn't buy anything. Years later the CEO was talking about overweight people while his face is deformed. Ironic. The race stuff was kind of glossed over in the news. This doc touched on the sexual assaults, but not much is said. You know some of these male models were assaulted and fired if they didn't follow through. Horrible. They were just young guys from all over America who wanted a job.

The next documentary some other channel is going to make is "Woke Hot: The Rise and Fall of Netflix". It will be about how a channel that started with a pretty good marketing angle decided to start ramming identity politics down people's throats in one disaster unpleasant project after another and crashed and burned.

Here it is Abercrombie & Fitch. I really thought they were going to tell the story of a venerable company, the once high quality brand that went too postmodern, lost its way, started producing its clothes in China and hence lost both its respected old world name and reputation for quality clothes. That might have been an interesting story.

Nope. Not even close. It turned out to be yet another (how many is it now?) story about people complaining that some company isn't nice to them, and whose brand was "too white" and actually glorified good looking people, and where does that leave the ugly and fat people out there? Excluded. This is where my niece would come in an say "do you want some cheese with that whine?" For me, the new stock phrase is that these are now "The Days of Whine and Poses".

It did have one salutary effect -- it shows pretty clearly what is wrong with the civil rights laws in this country. If some company wants to push a particular "look", a "brand" -- something that involves a message that appeals to a particular demographic, what business is it of anyone but their stock shareholders? A Hip Hop/Rap fashion magazine might push African themes, or Urban themes, with the corresponding black people to sell them. Country and southern whites might want the same, or someone wanting to tap into the Laplanders ethnic group might want to find some Lapps to have as spokesmen (shriek, "but, but you should say 'spokespeople', grief, I'm feeling faint.") It's all too boring and silly.

To be fair, me and the wife had decided the day before to cancel Netflix, but in wandering around the channel seeing if there was anything I wanted to watch before it turns off, this came on, and it simply confirmed why Netflix is utter garbage now. It's too bad, it used to not try my patience every night, but it's too much.

It's incomplete, at best. Context is everything, and mall culture of the late 90s/early 2000s had specific aesthetics for each store. Express and Guess employees had high heels and were dripping in makeup, Tommy Hilfiger's had baggy clothes and fades, Hot Topic's wore head to toe black and lots of eyeliner. Abercrombie was no different. This "documentary" is an hour and a half of clickbait.

Top down this is just a lesson in demographic marketing that exists even if it is offensive, being woke and pressing on one company doesn't make a movie about it, and it isn't really even the rise and fall it is mostly rise and wokeness. Right? Wrong? Doesn't matter it happens because it's all about the corporate bottom dollar. I mean this stuff happens to ANY demographically targeted brand. Should we pick Against All Odds and their urban targeted clothing? Should we pick Sears for targeting men with Craftsman because there was no Craftswoman? Pac Sun? Ron Jon? Is an upscale store considered to be forcing out the poors? Someone will always be offended. Supposedly non discriminatory hiring won't help. A white wino and a well dressed black guy walk into a suit store applying for a job the black guy would get hired. A preppy computer nerd doesn't usually turn up at a Cabela's gun counter. Is it necessarily legal? No. But it's not an exclusive Abercrombie & Fitch issue and didn't need a movie. It's not even the reason brands like A&F fall, people move to new brands because it gets old.

Love the people complaining about cancel culture who come here to leave a 1-star review and whine.

If people don't get why the doc targets this shop an not another it's pretty simple: they were very popular, they discriminated way more than other shops, there's proof of the discrimination, they got sued and had to settle, their brand became tacky and never recovered.