Abercrombie and Fitch Has Never Been for Everyone

I know everyone is sick to death of hearing the play by play of my medical life.  Since my colonoscopy went well and was generally free of any breaking news and given the fact that I am an apparent anesthesia lightweight and slept all day on one-third the amount they thought I might need, I am moving on to comment of the news of the day.  At least it was news of yesterday that really was a spot light on a 2006 interview.

The excitement I am referring to is the comment Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries made to Salon Magazine.  To paraphrase his 2006 remarks, he said that the people he wanted to buy and wear his clothes were the “cool, beautiful and thin kids” and he did this by making only skinny and small clothes.

When I was a kid Abercrombie and Fitch was a high-end luxury retailer of safari clothes.  If you were a rich, thin, WASP who was planning a big game hunt in Kenya, where you actually went and killed real life leopards and elephants, Abercrombie was the place you went to purchase the wardrobe needed for your killing rampage.  Not exactly a huge market and one that thankful and literally died off with the whole notion of killing those glorious and magnificent animals.

That first Abercrombie’s went under in the seventies and then another sporting goods retailer bought their mailing list and name and resurrected the brand.  I remember going in Abercrombie’s in Georgetown Park in Washington DC and looking at Viella plaid shirts for $495 that only came in size 4-8 and that was back when a size 4 was really like a triple zero now.  I thought then that this store is really out of touch with the real world and the lack of customers and subsequent closing of the entire line of stores came as no shock to me.

Then in the eighties the group from Ohio that owned the low-end retailer The Limited bought the Abercrombie and Fitch name and they turned it in to the clothing company marketing to tiny teens and pre-pubescents it is today.

I love that a company based in the clearly uncool center of the universe Columbus Ohio is the one trying to dictate what is cool and is only interested in the “thin and beautiful” people.  I am all for the free market corporate universe which the name Abercrombie and Fitch has always lived under.  If their model is one that cuts down their potential universe of customers to only the richest and thinnest fine.  You can do that by making everything tiny and expensive.  It is a very small group.

But how can they only get the most beautiful?  When Jeffries went on record saying he only wanted the “attractive” all American kids to shop in his store I wonder what mechanism he had to keep the ugly people out?  I have not noticed an ugly meter in the store door ways, but clearly the blaring music and giant cologne misting machines shooting out the foul smell of their signature scent could be masking the sensors that alert the clerks when someone of the exact opposite of the A & F profile is violating their sacred space set aside for just the thinnest and most beautiful.

Sure only carrying thin cut shirts to size large and girls pants to size 10 discourages anyone bigger than the average Asian teen to leave the store feeling dejected and depressed.  I am certain from having been forced to visit the store with a couple of adolescent girls that the clerks keep the back dressing room for only the customers they want and make the undesirable wait in line at the three dressing rooms the front hoping they will give up and leave.

I think the best revenge on store like Abercrombie’s, who openly bully fragile teenage girls about their body image, is to take as many middle aged women in them as possible and have us try on and stretch out every last one of those teeny-weeny, skinny cut t-shirts they have.  There is no greater turn-off to the teen market than to think that their Moms have adopted a brand.

Now, I am not suggesting that Moms actually go and buy the Abercrombie wear because the actual worst thing is a Mom thinking she can rock the teen look.  So if by chance you go in A&F on a vengeance, trying-on spree and discover you look good in one of those mini skirts please do not be tempted to buy it.  You are really just falling victim to the pulsating music and mind-melding stench of the store.  Remind yourself why you went in and go get that mini skirt in the next two sizes down and try that on and stretch it out.  Then take a really good look at yourself and remember you are middle aged.

And if you are already a thin and beautiful teenager you can buy your clothes anywhere and still be thin and beautiful.  Supporting a brand that openly has disdain for the average makes you look less beautiful, not more.