Why I hate Abercrombie

This article begins by talking about how white, gay men are drawn to the Abercrombie clothing line. It’s interesting to think about what makes the brand such a magnet for white, gay men. Abercrombie was established in 1892. It quickly grew to become a prosperous outdoorsmen’s store, featuring elaborate promotions set up just like they would be in the wilderness. Even in the earliest days of its conception Abercrombie was associated with white men who lived in the leisure class. The company first created the catalog after Abercrombie had resigned. This catalog was more than 450 pages long and was shipped to over 50,000 elite white males who they hoped to make potential customers. Abercrombie began to face economic hard times until current CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch began a very successful marketing campaign that captured “playful coed shots” to glamorize the collegiate lifestyle. In 1997 Abercrombie and Fitch launched the A&F Quarterly to further promote their new image. In 1998 Abercrombie and Fitch once again became a publicly traded company.

What’s interesting about their Marketing campaign is how much they have to focus on marketing the lifestyle that their clothes provide to privileged and leisure class whites because the clothes are actually boring and homely. Abercrombie provides the Abercrombie Look Book: Guidelines for Brand Representatives of Abercrombie and Fitch to all of their Brand Representatives. These books discuss numerous topics but are broken down into five sections: Introduction, Our Past, Our Present, Our Future, and the A&F look. This book talks about all the qualities. Both personal and physical that a Brand Representative must have in order to sell the Abercrombie images, which is what ultimately sells their clothes. In all of the pages of the A&F Quarterly there are images of white men and women, but predominantly men.

Just one of the many ways that Abercrombie promotes racism is the line of “Asian” themed t-shirts that the company launched in April of 2003. These t-shirts poked fun of Asians and were protested by people in that community.

Another way to look at the way Abercrombie promotes racism is the skin color of all of their employees. In all A&F stores the sales staff is predominantly white. Similar clothing designers such as Ralph Lauren do a much better job of promoting equality as well as diversity. On June 17th, 2003 a class action lawsuit was filed against Abercrombie claiming they discriminate in their hiring practices. The author of this article believes that the elaborate creating of the A&F look was a method to avoid company exposure to lawsuits against their employment policies. The author of this article also said that every previous employee that he had spoken to were white men. It also said that they ranged in age from 19-26 and were either college educated or in college. These men told stories of how black employees were excluded from company photos, sales staff who were fired because they did not fit the Abercrombie look, and the grading scale used to rate the looks of Abercrombie employees. One previous employee also said that they were very clear in the employee type that they were looking for. They wanted the all American look, natural, no skin problems, and to look for white people.

Numerous times the author stated in this article that people are not buying the Abercrombie clothing line for the clothes; they are buying in for the life style. Having said that people have to understand that it’s all apart of their business plan and marketing campaign. It’s not being racist using implementing the right sales force to make the most of their business plan. If African Americans and Hispanics were buying their clothes it would be different. Vast majority of their clients fit the description of their typical employee and they want to be sold clothes by someone that is similar to them. It’s the same in all areas of sales. People want someone who can relate to them and that they feel comfortable with or they are not going to be willing to buy. People need to stop claiming that they are discriminating, when in all actuality they are running a very successful business that provides their customers with exactly what they want.