Abercrombie and Fitch

A new Netflix documentary shows how the forces that made A&F an enormous brand also doomed it to failure.

The film spends a great deal of time recounting Abercrombie’s endless list of scandals, from the discriminatory hiring practices it maintained to the closet’s worth of racist graphic T-shirts it released. Featuring interviews with former A&F models and employees, including those who were involved in a class-action suit against the retailer, the documentary intends to shed light on how Abercrombie engineered its immense popularity and why it burnt out so quickly. Under Jeffries, Abercrombie wasn’t just a popular brand and logo—it created a totally dominant aesthetic with its preppy vision of American high schools and colleges.

At its best, White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch offers a potent mix of nostalgia and schadenfreude.

The doc gives us a sense of getting caught up in such a grotesque, racist fashion phenomenon, so much that when a former employee of A&F Quarterly talks about a shattering realization he had watching Sam Raimi’s “ Spider-Man”—that Peter Parker's bully was dressed head to toe in A&F—you can almost understand his surprise. And we get to meet “armpit guy,” one of a few male models whose body was put on shopping bags, and who also clues us into the alleged predatory nature of Bruce Weber, the photographer who created the A&F image. With the on-screen inclusion of a lot of former brains and bods behind the company, it becomes clear how much the company used youth—one woman talks about how there were no copywriters for the graphic tees, it was just whatever young designers came up with. It is informative about the ways “mad genius” Jeffries perfected selling sex and popularity to teenagers, taking a brand name that used to specialize in outdoor wear and turning it into American prep. Klayman has a bit more direction when she directs the audience’s desire for outrage on how the company embodied the counter-intuitive approach of exclusionary business practices, showing how their focus on six-pack fascism and predominantly white leadership led to their downfall. At its best, “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch” offers a potent mix of nostalgia and schadenfreude.

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The townhouse appears to have finally been sold in September of 2018 for just $12 million, according to Zillow. "It has been an honor to lead this extraordinarily talented group of people," Jeffries said in a statement at the time. And he is also credited in the doc for its meteoric downfall as a result of exclusionary and discriminatory hiring and marketing practices. Jeffries does not appear to have a public LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram account. Elle Décor described his pad as a vine-covered townhouse featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, polished nickel, and rooms covered in mirrors. Jeffries led the mega-popular brand to great success in the '90s and early 2000s.

Mike Jeffries, who led Abercrombie & Fitch during its dramatic rise and fall, is featured prominently in Netflix's new documentary "White Hot," which is out ...

In 2012, Bloomberg reported on an “Aircraft Standards” manual for the A&F executive jet, written by Jeffries’s longtime life partner Matthew Smith. (The manual was made public in an age-discrimination lawsuit brought against the company by a former pilot, according to Bloomberg.) The manual included 40 pages of highly detailed instructions, including what kind of underwear aircraft staff should wear and the seating arrangements for Jeffries’s dogs. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. In the story, Jeffries is described as a “quirky perfectionist and control freak,” who always goes through the revolving doors at A&F headquarters twice and never passes other employees on the stairwells. Wexner, on the other hand, was the king of retail; he was the CEO of A&F’s then-parent company L Brands, which owned stores like The Limited and Victoria’s Secret. The documentary describes how it was Jeffries’ strategy to center this new iteration of A&F around elitism, sex, and exclusivity. At the time, Jeffries was known as the former president of Alcott & Andrews, a women’s retail chain that filed for bankruptcy in 1989. Netflix’s new documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch charts the messy trajectory of the once-cooler-than-cool mall store that peaked in the ‘90s and early 2000s, only to come crashing down after a string of racist, exclusionary controversies.

A new Netflix doc takes a scalpel to the layers to meaning in the rise and fall of one part of mall culture.

A male model for the company explains that he was drinking in a bar in Nebraska when a woman approached and invited him to come for a photo-audition. One had the slogan, “Wong Brothers Laundry Service – Two Wongs Can Make It White.” Asian-Americans protested outside the stores, 60 Minutes did a report and the internal culture of the chain was examined. As one of its former executives says, the idea was to create an aspiration: “I wish I had that Abercrombie thing.” But the “thing” was not a T-shirt or jeans. As one former executive says about the homoeroticism, “It went straight over the heads of the preppy white bro’s who consumed it.” We now look at the phenomenon of the Abercrombie & Fitch of the 1990s and early 2000s and see something approaching a campaign for white supremacy. White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch (new on Netflix) is a fast-paced but ultimately furious documentary about the clothing line that once was the fashion zeitgeist.

A former Abercrombie & Fitch recruiter breaks down the brand's infamous “Look Policy” in this clip from Netflix's new "White Hot" documentary.

Once you finally made your way to the door, you were greeted by a pair of shirtless (and often white) employees that looked exactly like the models featured in the brand’s campaigns — if there wasn’t a queue to get inside, that is. That façade presented to customers was the epitome of the A&F branding during what was arguably its heyday in popularity, led by then-CEO Mike Jeffries. Unarguably, not all customers were represented and catered to. Even from blocks away, the pungently sweet A&F smell would “lure” you in — if you were resilient enough to bear it.

The film details the ways the clothing company had proudly put its "exclusionary" cool kids branding into practice.

As the documentary outlines, a specific theme for the shirts was called "Buddha fest" and featured a cliché portrait of an oversized Buddha drawing. According to the company, Elauf's scarf went against its "Look Policy" and its "classic East Coast collegiate style" dress code. Employees were no longer called "Brand Representatives." Instead, they were divided into two categories with two distinct titles: "Impact" employees were mainly people of color who worked in the back and "model" employees were mainly white people who worked up in the front. And to a nearby female mannequin, Jeffries criticized, "We don't want her to look too butch." The brand's most notorious shirt featured an illustration of the "Wong brothers" who wore matching conical hats and advertised a fictional laundry service. Despite the stereotypical portrayals and offensive rhetoric, the tees were a hit among A&F consumers. A settlement was eventually reached and included a consent decree, requiring the company to change its policies to promote diversity within the workforce, prevent discrimination and appoint a Vice President for Diversity. It goes on to state that a "neatly combed, attractive, natural, classic hairstyle" worn on an image of a white model is acceptable while dreadlocks, which are showcased on a Black model, is unacceptable for both men and women. According to journalist Moe Tkacik, A&F had weekly employee review sheets, which required store managers to rank each of their employees on a look-based scale of "cool to rocks." To help make the process easier, store managers were provided a literal book that strictly outlined "what good-looking looks like." By the 1970s, A&F tanked financially — eventually filing for bankruptcy — and was forced to revamp their brand in order to rejoin the market. "We are selling an experience for our customer, an atmosphere that people want to experience again and again.

'White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch,' out April 19 on Netflix, uncovers how the mall mainstay fell from grace.

Soon, Abercrombie again faced legal trouble when Muslim teenager Samantha Elauf alleged that she was rejected after a job interview at the store in 2008 because she was wearing a headscarf. O’Keefe says in White Hot that he was never able to wear Abercrombie because they never made clothing in his size. He also says he dealt with anorexia in high school, and felt especially sensitive to the store’s exclusivity. The settlement also required Abercrombie to increase diversity in its hiring process as well as in its advertisements and catalogs. For example, a former member of the Diversity and Inclusion team at Abercrombie recalls being in a meeting where her colleagues openly discussed what physical features they wanted in their employees. Weber has since been accused of sexual harassment and misconduct multiple times; in 2018, he became the subject of a sexual harassment and sexual misconduct lawsuit, with former models from Abercrombie and other brands accusing him of inappropriate behavior on shoots. This quote, which came out after the first round of discrimination lawsuits were settled, later came to symbolize everything that was wrong with the company. A quote from current CEO Fran Horowitz on its website reads: “Abercrombie isn’t a brand where you need to fit in—it’s one where everyone truly belongs.” While Abercrombie & Fitch was built on the exact opposite sentiment, White Hot shows why the company had to go in an extreme direction in order to survive in the modern day. The case was settled in 2004, with Abercrombie paying $40 million to the plaintiffs. While many fashion brands are implicit in their exclusion, Abercrombie was explicit about its mission, making it clear who they wanted to shop at and work in their stores. In the Netflix documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, out April 19, director Alison Klayman tracks how the store, which thrived on promoting beauty standards that idealized thinness and whiteness, began to come apart when employees began calling out what made it so toxic. The documentary features interviews with former Abercrombie executives, retail employees, and models, as well as cultural critics and activists who helped bring Abercrombie’s troubling practices to light.

"White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch" director Alison Klayman talks the systemic racism that powered the brand.

It’s less about the pro- or anti-camp, and more about [how] this was a cultural phenomenon that touched everywhere.” Now, sitting where we are today, it’s easier to talk about and tease it out, but it was something that was reported at the time and we all lived through. The brand was decided to be more “golden retrievers and Jeeps,” as the documentary reports. “It’s a credit to the incredible people who spoke to us and shared their stories, because I think what you realize is that this is not an abstract harm. “I was kind of shocked at how much it took these abstract negative forces in society and systemized it,” Klayman continued. Buying something was akin to buying into a new you, but as it turns out, only certain customers were deemed worthy of the brand’s “all-American” message.

New documentary 'White Hot' narrates how the sprawling brand made a mockery – and a multimillion dollar marketing concept – of masculinity.

As the concept of masculinity moves into something more fluid and more open-minded, a quick browse of Abercrombie's webstore shows that the high school jock wears boxy sweater vests, and shorts with five inch inseams, and even Pride hoodies that are on par with the diversity ranges of every other middle bracket brand. For now though, 'Everybody Belongs' at Abercrombie. The plain white tees even say so in rainbow typeface (what else?). But just as A&F cannot be blamed for branded, corporate sexualisation, it was by no means ahead of the curve for inclusivity. It cemented a Eurocentric, quasi-Olympian ideal of masculinity that is still pervasive not just in the gay community, but within pop culture at large. So powerful was the logo that White Hot recounts the induction of one head office employee who was told that they could spell 'Abercrombie' in dogshit on a baseball cap and still sell it for $50. But homogeneity wasn't just a bug with Abercrombie & Fitch. As the Netflix documentary chillingly tells us, it was the feature. It is this strain of whiteness – and the ensuing problematic template for excellence – that built the foundation of Abercrombie and Fitch. For a time, it was one of the most successful American retail stories. And the models – the focus of this sex – sold these clothes despite being shot in very little clothing. Where we were once pummelled with rippling torsos in the darkened corners of an Abercrombie store, we now face them 24/7 from the bright corners of an iPhone. Instagram and TikTok are awash with abs from their respective userbases even as companies push for more body inclusion and diversity in their outputs. White athleticism was the brand. Bruce Weber, the photographer behind Abercrombie's infamous campaigns, worked in tandem with Jeffries to build this image that "fetishized the all-American boy" as one former employee puts it. An official sales report released by Abercrombie in 2003 posted sales of $1.708 billion. But at its peak, the brand was making an absurd amount of cash. "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch" the lead whined to the musical equivalent of a K-hole by a campfire.

There are people of color, sizes up to 3XL and even a Pride-themed collection featuring "gender inclusive" rainbow tees. The brand's Instagram account, ...

"But they didn't have the platform to be able to voice it and now they do." But, like various other documentaries revisiting troubling elements of our not-too-distant past, "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch" is less an exposé of what happened under his leadership and more a reflection on what we, as a society, allowed to happen. It would be well into the next decade before Jeffries' quote -- and the brand's history of problematic marketing and advertising -- became more of a corporate liability. For all the current messages of inclusion, millennials (and older) will remember an altogether different Abercrombie -- one that took over malls and billboards with an army of attractive models and ripped male torsos. Through interviews with former models, recruiters, store workers and executives, the 88-minute film suggests that appearing cool, attractive and White wasn't just an exercise in branding: it was an active corporate strategy that came at the expense of non-White employees and consumers. The brand's Instagram account, meanwhile, proudly promotes models in wheelchairs, stories of body-positivity and statements of LGBTQ solidarity.

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We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. That suit was settled in 2012, with the company not admitting wrongdoing. The flagship expanded to a 12-story department store on Madison Avenue, where it sold clothing and sporting goods. Ocampo, Barrientos and Jennifer Sheahan were among the former employees who sued Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination in 2003. Carla Barrientos, a Black woman, claimed she was taken off her store's rota after requesting to work on the shop floor. Pictured: Ashton Kutcher in one of the adverts But at that moment I was like, "It’s OK to be angry about this",' Yu recounted. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.' We don’t market to anyone other than that,' he said. I really don't care what anyone other than our target customer thinks,' he said. It was understood within the company that the employees on the floor all had to be good looking and respect the Abercrombie & Fitch style guidelines. She said she lost her job after a member of the corporate team from the retailer visited her store and 'noticed a bunch of Asian people in the store'.

Netflix documentary 'White Hot' tackles racial and religious discrimination lawsuits against Abercrombie & Fitch. The brand rose to popularity in the '90s ...

However, is the new strategy of trying to appeal to everyone, and wanting to be liked in the way that is cool now, really just a rebranding of the same problem? This shift forced the company to shift leadership and focus on creating a sense of belonging and inclusion. People shared negative experiences of feeling like the brand purely focused on clothing for a small majority of thin people, while many others were interested in the clothes. During that time, the goal was to sell that “all-American” lifestyle of being preppy, sexy, yet more affordable than competitors such as Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. Mike Jeffries, the man who took over as CEO in the ’90s, recognized this crucial aspect of a clothing brand — you weren’t selling clothing, you were selling an aspirational life. I remember walking past the store with other teenage girls, and we would be giggling and daring each other to go in.

It was 1999, I was seven years old, and I wanted a purplish-red Abercrombie & Fitch crewneck so badly I could almost taste the microfibers.

I mostly knew the basic facts that the film laid out: Founded in New York City in 1892, Abercrombie had struggled over the years until it rebranded as a teen retailer best known for wildly sexy ads in the 1990s. It was 1999, I was seven years old, and I wanted a purplish-red Abercrombie & Fitch crewneck so badly I could almost taste the microfibers. What if I did extra chores in exchange for a pair of jeans with rhinestones up the sides?

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The movie is a worthy examination of the culture surrounding Abercrombie and why it became so toxic—and how we followed suit—but it could’ve been a slightly more rounded-out story had it focused on all elements of the company’s biases. It interrogates the foundations of a company we allowed to rule our subconscious through that strange chokehold: The need to be liked. Because of this, the film is less an overwrought rehash of how shitty it was to grow up in this era and more a justified reexamination of what discrimination really does to the psyche—and how much of it we can stand in an effort to be desirable. A thorough and unbiased reflection of an event will always cover both sides, but ultimately, those who have been wronged by this company over the years deserve to take the spotlight. I came of age in the 2000s, when Abercrombie and its younger sibling Hollister were the only things that truly mattered when it came to your “cool” factor. Using nostalgia to unite us, White Hot reframes the discriminatory actions taken by a company that had a monopoly on determining what was deemed cool in impressionable, early ‘00s circles of young adults.

Michael Jeffries rebranded Abercrombie & Fitch into a 'cool' and exclusive company beginning in 1992 — learn more about the former CEO.

“In every school, there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. The sexy and specific vibe of elitism was something Jeffries never apologized for — and ultimately got him into trouble. With the hiring of Jeffries, the brand became intentionally exclusionary and it was profitable … for a while.

Carla Barrientos was 19 when she first started working at the Abercrombie & Fitch at the Valley Plaza Mall in Bakersfield, California. It was the early ...

It was very disappointing to see it was not done, and the oversight was really lacking. You just didn’t have the “look,” and the look didn’t have anything to do with you being Black. The look had to do with attractiveness. It was validating to hear I wasn’t alone, but it was scary to think this was a systemic practice, that this was how they operated. Now I dress a lot differently than I did back when I was 19. It wasn’t because of something I could change; it was about who I was as a Black person. I was told to just keep checking back, but when I wasn’t on the schedule for a couple months, I knew I didn’t work there anymore. I saw other folks who don’t fit what Abercrombie thought was “all-American.” It was difficult trying to process that. I knew what she was saying was true, but I didn’t want to face that reality. So I went to the manager and told him my friend was willing to swap. One day, I was venting to my friend who worked there, and I told her, “I want more day shifts. One day I was shopping at the store when I was approached about working there. The first time I went to Abercrombie & Fitch, I heard the store before I could see it.