“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” says Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”
Okay, so Abercrombie absolutely feeds into high school clique culture: you know who were part of the douche-bag in-crowd even in the 90’s, when I was in high school. So how does Abercrombie and Fitch go about making sure that somebody dorky or nerdy doesn’t wear their clothing? Well they actually have a few policies to make it happen. First of all, they don’t make their products in plus sizes for women. If you are a plump or heavy teenage girl, you will discover that Abercrombie and Fitch doesn’t have a size for you. And this is on purpose: they don’t want you wearing their clothes. You aren’t cool enough.
Furthermore, if their clothing gets damaged, they do not donate it to the homeless or shelters, as other companies do for clothes that can’t be sold in malls: they burn it. Wouldn’t want some homeless person wearing your clothing, right? After all, the CEO also said “We hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”
All this has inspired enough blowback that Abercrombie is being popularly regarded as elitist bastards promoting their preppy clothes through snob appeal. It has lead Greg Karber to make a campaign to purposely donate all his Abercrombie and Fitch clothing to the poor, and to shop at second-hand clothes stores to also donate all he can to the poor to “readjust the Abercrombie & Fitch brand.”
The campaign has poignancy, a sort of “knock down the snob” excitement, though incidentally giving clothing to the poor specifically because they are undesirable and will ruin the image of the name brand isn’t exactly an act of charity. Check out this video, anyway, to see this young man’s campaign to troll the narcissistic company and its snobby products.
Many believe that the whole idea of #fitchthehomeless is degrading because the homeless people are being used to contrast the idea of cool. The attempt to #fitchthehomeless looks down upon homeless people as “unworthy,” or lesser human beings. And it’s not clear how or whether, from the homeless perspective, this stunt is actually helping anything.
P1124 is another company in contention for the title of no. 1 brand of the homeless. P1124 has started a “Wear One, Share One” campaign to clothe the same group homeless people on Skid Row. But unlike the #fitchthehomeless movement, whose goal is to shame Abercrombie without regard to the wellbeing of the homeless, P1124’s goal is to uplift and bless the homeless. The “Wear One, Share One” Campaign is simple; buy one shirt, get two, one to wear, one to share. The goal is to #uplifthehomeless, and show them that they are worthy of receiving the same new clothes that we purchase for ourselves.
Very interesting… P1124 is currently raising funds on indegogo.
I am the mother of two “cool kids”, ages 12 & 15. They are good-looking & popular and wear nice expensive clothes, including A&F. BUT, since I am the one that shops for them and I am overweight, I WILL NOT be shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch anymore. My money can be better spent somewhere else.
I think it’s ridiculous that people have to either lose weight & accept the people that are cool enough to wear their clothes. Most of my family members wear their clothes, & Most people are no longer interested in buying clothes from there. . .what does that mean for A&F? That doesn’t look good for the company and they are out of business, it’s only a matter of time. People have the right to wear whatever they want.